5-minute Freewrite Day 376 prompt: tiny

This is not fiction; it is entirely true. This morning my mother-in-law died at age 83 after a lengthy illness. She was always rather short in stature, but loss of weight in recent years had left her quite tiny. Her husband died 25 years ago, and her youngest daughter died 5 years ago, both of them from liver failure due to alcoholism, so you can see Mom T.'s life had its complications and its sorrows, yet I always knew her as a cheerful, upbeat person. She gave birth to 6 children in 10 years (before disposable diapers became popular!), fed and clothed them on a limited budget, tended a huge garden, froze and canned food for her family, and welcomed all the new additions to the family with open arms: first her kids' spouses and then her ten grandchildren. She got to see her very first great-grandchild just a month ago, and she was still doing fairly well at the time, for which we are all thankful. She was a wonderful mother-in-law to me. She never gave unsolicited advice, never criticized how I did things, let me vent about her son now and then when he was being difficult, and shared many wonderful recipes with me. She was an amazing cook! With that in mind, I plan to bake her gingerbread cooky recipe yet today in memory of her.