who because of our shared interests was very close. He was my age, and we shared the flowering of youth. As a boy he had grown up with me, and had gone to school together and played with one another Augustine and this unnamed friend knew each other for a short time, yet Augustine felt that he was losing someone he had known all his life. You [God] took the man from this life when our friendship had scarcely completed a year. It had been sweet to me beyond all sweetnesses of life that I had experienced. The unnamed friend came down a bad fever, and he was baptized while he was unconscious. Augustine felt as if this baptismal sacrament would have no affect on him and he would carry all the sins of his childhood. The unnamed friend did awake from his unconscious state and Augustine and the friend had a minor conflict over a joke Augustine made over the friends baptism. The friend did not find it a laughing matter, but they did resolve the conflict. Augustine left for a few days and while he was gone, his friend passed away. Augustine explains that he was stricken with grief from the death of his friend, which made him want to leave his hometown. Everything made him think of his friend, and he was always looking for him. Augustine was constantly weeping and was a wreck. My home became a torture to me; my fathers house a strange world of unhappiness; all that I shared with him was transformed into a cruel torment. My eyes looked for him everywhere, and he was not there. I hated everything because they did not have himI had become to myself a vast problem Augustine explains that during this time of sorrow, he did not look towards God for help, and was too wrapped up in the misery of the death of his friend. One thought he had was that he was angered by the fact people in general do not realize that they are on this earth for a short time, and they do not understand the temporality of life. What madness not to unders...
