Processing

As I have previously written, my mother growing up was hard to live with, and that's putting it nicely. I never felt good enough, but now, she's back...the mother that I had up until I was about five, before she turned into a hard women.
As she lay there curled up on the sofa, her ice water with the straw clanking against the metal thermos sides as she stirred the half melted chunks around it's perimeter, all got quiet as she out of no where says, Sis...I need to tell you a few things.
As the lump in my throat seemed as if it was starting to block my airway, I mumbled ok, but wasn't sure if I was ready to hear what she had to say.
She started with well, when I was nine, I was on the playground at school, and these boys ran up to me and started calling me ugly, they said my face was flat and I was so ugly. That night, after coming home and crying all day, I got on my knees and prayed to God, I asked him to one day give me a beautiful daughter, she said I don't care Lord if I'm ugly in this life, but please give me a daughter that's beautiful so she never gets picked on.
My heart now in my throat, I couldn't speak...for 35 years my mom has seemed to all but despise me, I needed her love, I needed to hear this back when I had a pistol in my mouth at 13 and wanted to die so it made her happy. When I felt like a monster, a reject that should've been aborted.
And now...here we are.
Her next words grabbed me by the soul and I was screaming inside crying. She said and he answered those prayers, you are so beautiful, on the inside and out.
 I have forgiven my mother, so why couldn't I respond? Why didn't I say thank you? I guess I'm still processing everything, actually I know I am ..its like pouring light into a blackened room, this hurts my eyes and breaks my heart.
All I can do is cry.
Anymore I'm at her house helping her and my dad get about. Her cancer has spread, most days she doesn't leave the couch, and it's a curious thing to me, as many horrible memories that exist with her, the healing that has taken place since she got sick has almost created that childlike bond with her again, the one where I can't stop getting emotional when I see her because I know she's dying and soon I will no longer walk through that door and talk to her. I'm angry..I'm so so broken.
And ironically the good that's taking place has outweighed any bad, I'm gonna miss her.
I'm angry at time, I mean why now? Why do I finally get the mother I needed all along, just to have her taken away from me again?
As I sat there in that moment, trying to figure out what to say, she starts confessing things and apologizing for things I didn't even remember. Then she said that she prayed to God in the moments leading up to her own father's battle with cancer ending, she said I just didn't know how I was going to go on without my dad, then here came you...and everything has just been healed between us.
Yes, yes it has.
Yet here I am, once again saying God just take me, but for all the right reasons this time.
I just don't know how to handle all this.