My mom is fine and hopefully will be for many years to come.
I don't really think he was doing that so much as using the story to justify Mary Jane's actions in OMD and, to be honest, if my mother had died, that would be at the forefront of my mind whenever I was looking for a story that could illustrate a point. It's still a pretty weak comparison.
Still, it really is a more serious business to him than it is to the average fan. It's our hobby and, at the end of the day, we can always just walk away if we get so disgusted at what's happening. It's his livelihood. It seems he's not very good at it, but he still is going to want to sell comic books and if he can't do that, at least defend his decisions against detractors so he loses as few readers as possible. That's really all it is. He thought a single Spider-Man would sell better than a married Spider-Man. It didn't work out that way, so he tried spinning it so that some of the audience might say "hey, that wasn't such a bad idea after all." My guess is that it was a stalling trick, they were considering bringing back the marriage when sales got bad, but they were waiting until a decent amount of time had passed so they wouldn't look foolish and turn more people off. (If they had brought back the marriage after a few months, some people would have been happy, but others would have rolled their eyes at Marvel having a major event and undoing it right away.)
I'm with you in that between Sins Past and OMD It seemed like he was trying to push people's buttons, but few people deliberately try to be awful at their jobs.