For fucks sake, he wasn't supposed to have dead friends. The strangely sensible matter of his words shut John up for a small bit. Mostly on account of not having much to say about his own internal crisis. Next time he was drinking at home.
"Mates are mates, dead or alive." Just because someone wasn't there anymore didn't mean they didn't matter. That was the bloody problem, wasn't it? In any sense of the matter dead people were affecting living people more than the other way around. Even in his dreams or whatever the hell they really were his mom and brother were gone. He could easily point to how that was obviously a matter of grief. Only he couldn't because as per this network that was conveniently suggested by an occultist showing up in his class John couldn't brush this off as easily as he would have loved to.
Turning back to look at the young man fully for the first time during their entire conversation John studied him. "I s'pose that's what a bar is for anyhow. Cheers to the one friend we got, no matter what." When times were hard and you didn't want to talk, just black out for a bit? There was always a bar or a bottle or both. That was something positive.