My MIL says that if her daughter passes away, my husband will be by himself, but what about me?

Photo byAustin MabeonUnsplash

I'm not sure if I'm misinterpreting things, but my MIL has a track record of saying awful things to me, including trying to make my children's lives miserable. They are my husband's stepchildren, and at the time of the comment, we were dating, and she hadn't even met them. To be fair, I know she's going through a parent's worst nightmare. My 38-year-old sister-in-law is suffering from cancer and is currently in the ICU.

I usually don't answer my husband's phone when his mother calls, but because his sister is in the ICU, I answered while he was in the shower. I tried to keep the conversation brief by telling her he was in the shower and would call her back unless it was an emergency that required me to pull him out of the shower. However, she decided to engage further, and the main thing she wanted to tell me was that her son would now be "by himself" if my sister passes and that she never wanted her son to be "alone."

I replied, "Husband isn't alone." She knows that we are married and still raising my ten-year-old daughter, whom he adores as if she were his own. He has been in her life since right after her first birthday. I didn't make a big deal out of it, and I got off the phone as quickly as I could without hanging up on her.

This came up in marriage counseling, which we need because of her almost constant harmful antics. She has toned it down a bit in the past two years, thankfully, after her son told her that if she didn't change, she wouldn't be invited to the wedding. So instead of being nice, she just doesn't speak to me. To me, it's a blessing. But there is almost always some kind of "comment" or "dig" every time I see or speak with her.

My husband stated that I was just being "selfish" because I was offended by his mother's comment. Am I? I replied to him that if she needed to make that comment, she could have said it to literally anyone other than me.