I am furious at my mother for dying after I spent years caring for her

Dear Delyara, I cared for my mother through dementia for seven years. I fed her, washed her, changed bedding, argued with doctors, gave up holidays, reduced my work, and learned to sleep lightly enough to hear her bedroom door open. She died three months ago. Everyone expected relief mixed with grief. I feel anger. Not only at dementia. At her. I know how terrible that sounds. She is dead and I am angry that after consuming so much of my life, she left before we had the chance to become mother and daughter again. I kept believing there would be one final clear conversation where she would recognize what I had done, perhaps thank me, perhaps apologize for the difficult years before illness. That conversation never came. She died calling me by her sister’s name. At the funeral, relatives told me I had been an amazing daughter. I wanted to shout that I had not done it for praise. I did it because I thought somewhere inside the care was a road back to her. Now the work is finished, and instead of freedom I am standing in an empty house furious at a woman who no longer exists to hear how much I gave.