Whose kid she was

Grief is such a strange, unpredictable thing. My daughter Rana took her life at the end of 2021 at age 36. She’s had five birthdays since then, each July 23. But for whatever reason this one, when she would have turned 41, hit me harder than any. It’s two weeks past her birthday today and I still feel a deep sadness. I’ve been thinking about how hard the first six months were after Rana died — and how much harder they would have been had it one of my biological children. Would I have needed more time? Would I have needed more serious help, beyond the grief counselor I got? Honestly, I think so, and it’s where the guilt lives. Feeling relieved that I didn’t break feels like a betrayal. Yet none of that touches whose kid she was to me. She advocated for me with her mom when I was courting them both — there was another man in the picture, allegedly an ex who wasn’t completely gone. Rana was clear: Jim, not him. Not him ever. Jim every day. And then Rana’s actual father showed up in her…