I would give your friend a second chance. I don't think most of us are programmed right to deal with tramautic news. I have a very strange tendency to laugh when I hear such things...I don't laugh, because I can control it, but that's what I feel like doing.

There's a certain surreality to hearing bad news that borders on the absurd. You know, most of us worry so much about how our hair looks or whatever and then we hear that someone close to us (or someone close to someone close to us, in your case), is sick, dying, etc., and it's like, suddenly there's real news to confront. I mean, it's hard to shift gears properly to process that.

Anyway, there's nothing wrong with telling this person how you feel if you think they're still not saying the right things.