When I first worked with Daisy Hontiveros Avellana, she was all of 88. By then she had survived five heart attacks, was suffering from crippling arthritis, had seen the loss of a baby, her husband, and even of her house to fire. I was asked by her daughter Ivi Avellana-Cosio to join a staged reading of Ladislas Fodor’s “The Vigil” to be performed at Far Eastern University (FEU). We rehearsed in the garage of their Pasig home and she sat there, script on her lap with an impish grin puffing up her cheeks.