I just read this thread with such amazement. My late father was so much like Dee's Mother in every way. He was always critical and quick to anger but while my mother was alive she served as his buffer to the world, like Dee's father does for her mother. After she died, he lived on for twenty years, totally estranged from one brother, back and forth with the other and always angry at me for something.
Like Dee's mother he was most angry at me for something I hadn't done at all. I happened to be with him when a realtor was helping him look for a smaller house, closer to town. He fell in love with a little house that I knew had things wrong. I spent days trying to talk him out of it but he bought it anyway and then spent the next ten years blaming me for everything that went wrong with it. I would get phone calls like this: "The hot water tank just blew up in this house you got me into. It's a total piece of crap! I would give anything if you had stayed home and minded your own business!" (It was almost funny.)
I would drive thirteen hours to visit him and he meet me at the door to tell me the last letter I wrote was too light hearted and "funny," to come in the same month that his wife died. "I ought to get a gun and shoot you!"
Sigh. Yes, he was having mini-strokes and some dementia, we found out later, but he was always bad tempered and a diagnosis wouldn't have made a lot of difference. Old age, loneliness and boredom all fueled his need to have a target for his anger and frustration and who better than his only daughter?
I second what Babygrant said:
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Whatever happens at least you KNOW that you did everything you could in your power to reconcile things with her. It's unfortunate she doesn't realize this, but there's only so much you can do. You are a good daughter.
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I tried to remain fairly passive during his rants. Argument and logic was considered "sass" so I would just mumble, "Sorry," until it passed and then we'd go out to lunch like nothing had happened. I was fortunate to live far enough away that I wasn't expected to visit too often, although I did keep writing and phoning. We actually had some good phone calls about what he had just watched on TV or read in the news. It wasn't all bad. He was an intelligent man with a good sense of humor and was liked by people not on his enemy list.
There was a moment I'll never forget, as I was saying goodbye after a visit where he had been particularly awful to me. He suddenly looked at me with tears in his eyes and said, "Please don't give up on me."
Dee, I think your mother knows she's a pill and that she pushes away the people who love her most. For some reason she can't help herself. I think you're doing just the right things -- sending her flowers, keeping in touch as much as she will allow. You
are a good daughter and someday when she's gone, like my father is, you'll be glad you tried to shrug off the bad and love that prickly parent in spite of herself.
(((hugs)))
Don't even worry about "what now". Just go with it for the time being. Sending you extra 
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