Fragments to help with detaching her from me

(bolds mine, typically.)
From http://ask.metafilter.com/132062/How-do-I-cope-with-my-grieving-Mom:

You are not shirking your duties as a daughter. You are not failing to show gratitude and love to the woman who cared for you when you were a helpless infant cyring at 3am. You are the adult daughter of an adult woman, and both of you have suffered a tremendous loss. You acknowledge your mother's grief, you don't seem impatient with her for grieving but rather frustrated with her for putting pressure on you to support her in her grief without seeing that you have your own grief and your own life to deal with as well. You don't need to feel guilty about taking care of yourself.

From http://www.angriesout.com/grown17.htm:

The child who was not allowed to have boundaries becomes energetically and developmentally arrested at this level with beliefs of not being safe in the world and being unworthy and unlovable. Thus the Shadow is born with the defenses and negative core beliefs becoming set in the child's repertoire. The child carries this primitive, self-defense core of fear even into adulthood. This is called the “Core Script” or Core Identity, which is like a big lens of perception by which the world is viewed. The defenses remain lurking in the unconscious mind ready to be called into action at any resemblance of threat.

From http://www.psychpage.com/family/library/dysfunctional.htm:

This first relationship you have in this world is with your parents. That relationship is supposed to focus more on your needs than on your parents' needs. Sometimes this isn't so.

Parents have children for many reasons, or may explain accidental parenthood to themselves in a number of ways.

They may expect to be loved unconditionally (the "greatest gift of all, the love of a child"), to feel superior ("See that trash can? That's where I found you and I can put you right back"), to "hold on" to a partner ("You don't think your son needs a father?"), or to explain their problems ("You're just like your father, lying whenever it serves you and just no good"). Parents may place their needs on the child, and expect the child to sacrifice his needs (i.e., to be silly, needy, and scared) to meet the parent's needs and soothe the parents' anxiety. Even a dysfunctional parent who denies can still be modeling very dysfunctional relationships for their children.

From http://www.k-state.edu/counseling/topics/relationships/dysfunc.html:

Allow Yourself to Feel Angry About What Happened.
Forgiveness is a very reasonable last step in recovery, but it is a horrible first step. Children need to believe in and trust their parents; therefore, when parents behave badly, children tend to blame themselves and feel responsible for their parents' mistakes. These faulty conclusions are carried into adulthood, often leaving guilt, shame, and low self-esteem. When you begin with trying to forgive your parents you will likely continue to feel very badly about yourself.

Placing the responsibility for what happened during your childhood where it belongs, i.e., with the responsible adults, [?? grasshopper aside! & ironic italics] allows you to feel less guilt and shame and more nurturance and acceptance toward yourself.

It is usually helpful to find productive ways to vent your anger. This can be done in support groups or with good friends. Try writing a letter to one or both of your parents and then burning the letter. You may want to talk with your parents directly about what happened.

If you decide to do this it is important to keep your goal clear. Do you want to encourage change and work for a better relationship, or are you trying to get even or hurt them back? Pursuing revenge frequently results in more guilt and shame in the long run. Holding on to anger and resentment indefinitely is also problematic and self-defeating. Focusing on old resentments can prevent growth and change.

From http://family.jrank.org/pages/172/Boundary-Dissolution-Dimensions-Boundary-Dissolution.html

Role-reversal. Role-reversal, also termed parentification, refers to a dynamic in which parents turn to children for emotional support. Although learning to be responsive and empathic to others' needs is a healthy part of child development, parentification involves an exploitative relationship in which the parents' expectations exceed the child's capacities, the parent ignores the child's developmental needs, or the parent expects nurturance but does not give it reciprocally. A parent engaged in role-reversal may be ostensibly warm and solicitous to the child, but the relationship is not a truly supportive one because the parents' emotional needs are being met at the expense of the child's. Further, children are often unable to meet these developmentally inappropriate expectations, which may lead to frustration, disappointment, and even anger. In fact, parents' inappropriate expectations for children, such that they provide nurturing to their parents, are a key predictor of child maltreatment.
[...]
Research shows that, over the course of childhood, young children who fulfill their parents' need for intimacy have difficulty regulating their behavior and emotions and demonstrate a pseudomature, emotionally constricted interpersonal style. In the longer term, childhood role reversal is associated with difficulties in young adults' ability to individuate from their families and adjust to college.

Parent-child role reversal also is associated with depression, low-self esteem, anxiety, and eating disorders in young women. Due to cultural expectations that associate caregiving with the feminine role, daughters may be particularly vulnerable to being pulled into the role of "mother's little helper".

Consistent with family systems theory, boundary violations also are more likely to occur when the marital relationship is an unhappy one and the parent turns to the child for fulfillment of unmet emotional needs.

From http://forum.outofthefog.net/topic/7414992/1/:

My mother is an engulfing mother when she has needs, and an ignoring one when I have needs or when she doesn't have any use for me.

My mom functioned mostly on the ignoring end of the spectrum, with occasional attemtps at engulfment where she would then get really enraged that I was NOT the daughter she wanted me to be and go back to ignoring me. I tick off most of those effects if I'm honest with myself.

My mom's ignoring extended to being very annoyed if any of my stuff was not in my own room (shoes, anything), if I made much conversation or sometimes just sounds of any kind she could hear, if there were school events that needed attending, notes that needed signing, all these things annoyed her greatly. and if I was ill, boy, did that piss her off. the rule was we had to stay strictly in our rooms except for trips to the bathroom, and she rarely wanted to get me medical attention, even when I needed it. and she'd cut off all direct contact for periods of time, both while I was in the same house and later when I left home.

more and more I realise it is not her I miss since she died, but I mourn the idea of a mother that I never had and recognise it will never happen.

From http://ask.metafilter.com/132062/How-do-I-cope-with-my-grieving-Mom (again):

I'm not saying she isn't grieving. I'm not saying she doesn't love you. But to use you in this way is just not right. Maybe in a primitive culture ie a culture without therapists / grief specialists / support groups et all, and maybe if you weren't also caught in this thing deeply, and maybe if you weren't in a very busy life... Maybe. But it's emotional blackmail, even if all those were not the case.

All of this shaming you in this thread because you're not up there holding her hand and wiping her nose as she sobs -- it's total bullshit. You can take turns holding one anothers hand and wiping one anothers nose as you sob, whatever. But that's not what's happening.

If you are to have a relationship with your mother it's got to be on equal footing. She's going to have to come to you as adult. I'm not saying that she won't be hurting, and hurting bad. But you cannot allow her to use you as she is.
[...]
I have a buddy used to be a life-guard in southern California. One thing that was drilled into him from day one is that he's got to take care of himself. If he doesn't use methods to prevent them from clawing on him, they'll both drown; it's almost like a type of judo, you get close to them and spin them around so they cannot drag you down and then you haul their ass back in. If you have to, you debilitate them to quit them from clawing at you so's you can get a handle on them.

But the fact is that you're not a life-guard. You're hurting too. You need a friend, an understanding friend, a friend who knows, and friend who can be there for you, too. Your mother isn't that friend now, and until she decides to do what she needs to do to become that friend -- and you've offered her some scenarios -- until she decides to become responsible for her grief, you're going to have to boundary her off some.

Grief is almost unimaginable. I've only married once, I was an ass, and when she took off -- and only when she took off -- did I see what an ass I'd been. And I loved her. Loved her. Agony. My sibs and parents were astonished, and so was I -- I'd been bitching about her from the start -- it took me years to go through it, it changed me in upwards of seventeen thousand ways, it ate through my cool, pounded at me in ways I didn't know were possible. The hardest piece in my life, and I've since lost many people I love; I guess much of what I learned in that period of grief over my little ex-wife transferred to other pieces, in fact I know that it did. Your mother is in that piece now. So -- compassion, for sure. But you can't save her.

From http://forum.outofthefog.net/topic/7404904/1/

It is impossible to have a constructive dialog with [such a] person, as you could with a more "normal" person because [this] person will never admit fault and they will not even meet you halfway in any disagreement or dispute. Hence nothing ever gets resolved.