A teacher told me once, "When you lose your parents you're an orphan. But what are you to be called when you’ve lost your child?" Your story goes straight to the heart, @therosepatch, not only because of the motif, but because of the way it is told: a concrete scene in the first paragraph makes us be there; the mother's decree in the second paragraph: perhaps the sweetest version of death, which makes us empathize; and finally, the bitter longing in the third and last paragraph, which comes from the guts is just the final blow.