I'm a Motherless Daughter and a Daughterless Mother. But I'll Celebrate

When I was little, my sisters and I prepared breakfast for our mother on Mother's Day, which we ceremoniously presented to her in bed. Our feast consisted of a bowl of cereal, some cut-up fruit, and a glass of orange juice. We didn't even attempt to figure out how the coffee machine worked.

After I grew up and moved out of the house, I treated my mother to dinner on Mother's Day. Those meals felt less perfunctory than the breakfasts had. We lingered over our chardonnay, reminiscing about the past and making plans for the future.

My mother's name was Zelda, and she wore the name perfectly. She was the biggest presence in every room she entered, the exclamation point at the end of the alphabet, her laughter uninhibited and contagious.

Once my husband Rob and I started our seven-year journey to becoming parents ourselves, Mother's Day felt like a bit of a sucker punch.

I still took my mother out to dinner, but now our conversations were more subdued, focusing on the latest failed IVF effort or the side effects from the cocktail of hormones I was taking.

I turned away when the young mothers came into the restaurant, hiding the tears of envy pooling in my eyes.

And then, at long last, my husband and I adopted a beautiful baby from Guatemala. Just a couple of years later, we doubled our bliss by bringing our daughter Dalia home.

For four years I was both giver and receiver on Mother's Day. Rob and the kids brought me breakfast in bed. Pancakes and an omelet, not cereal, my husband being a more competent cook than I'll ever be. Later in the day, we took my mother out to dinner.

If you'd asked me then I'd have said what I enjoyed most about the day were the hours in between the two meals, when my husband was on kid duty and I was given time to myself to be neither daughter nor mother, to just be me.

While caring for my children and my aging parents, it was far too easy to forget who that was.

I was more focused on diapers and dishes in those days than on taking time to recognize the abundance of riches in my life, the pixels in sharper focus than the big picture.

My mother died of breast cancer when Dalia was two, just months before we adopted our third baby. Mother's Day became mine to do as I chose, utterly free of obligation. My gift was a day removed from maternal responsibility, the very responsibility I'd worked years to achieve.

When Dalia was diagnosed with an ultra-rare degenerative disease, my parental responsibilities increased 100-fold. I think of it as extreme parenting, the difference between a leisurely game of golf and bungee jumping. Off Mt. Everest. Naked. Who had time for Mother's Day? I barely had time to brush my teeth.

But the holiday became more important to me as my daughter became sicker. The sweetness of her cuddles and the deliciousness of her smile meant so much more as the trajectory of her illness became clear.

Dalia died two years ago, just one week after her 17th birthday. Now I'm both a motherless daughter and a daughterless mother. Mother's Day stings in a far more powerful way than it did during those years of failed baby-making attempts.

I could, I suppose, ignore the holiday altogether. I could spend the day in bed watching TV or drown myself in work or travel to a place where Mother's Day isn't observed.

But I'm still a mother. I have two other children who remind me of this every day as I wrestle with the college application process and cheer from the bleachers on the baseball field and step in as career counselor, therapist, and relationship coach.

And I'm still and will always be Dalia's mother, too. That doesn't go away with her death. She fills my heart as much as she always did, and I do my best to live up to her example of courage and strength. The presence of her absence is with me all the time.

I will always answer the question "how many children do you have?" by saying "three."

And if still Dalia's mother, then also Zelda's daughter. I see her when I look in the mirror, and more and more I hear her when I laugh.

Years ago I longed for time on Mother's Day to "just be me." Now, I see that there's no me without them. And that's worthy of celebration.

Jessica Fein is the author of Breath Taking: A Memoir of Family, Dreams, and Broken Genes, available wherever you love to buy books. She's also the host of the "I Don't Know How You Do It" podcast, where she talks to people whose lives seem unimaginable from the outside. Learn more about Jessica at jessicafeinstories.com or connect with her on Instagram @feinjessica.

All views expressed are the author's own.

Do you have a unique experience or personal story to share? See our Reader Submissions Guide and then email the My Turn team at myturn@newsweek.com.