A short reflection on Death (of Ivan Ilych)
I have been thinking about death quite a lot, in both its abstract nature and as the experience we all have to face sooner than we would ever like.
There are so many curious things about Death. In one sense, it is the great unifier. Everyone, whether they be rich or poor, powerful and weak, pampered or tortured, will ultimately die. They will reckon with the slow and horrifying loss of their life. They will watch everything that they have, slip away from their fingers with the helplessness of a paralyzed person - willing with all their mind for their body to move no inch. Death, in that sense, becomes the final stop at which one can properly evaluate one's life.
I recently came across the ending chorus of Oedipus Rex by Sophocles which colored my reading of 'The Death of Ivan Ilych':
"Now as we keep our watch and wait the final day, count no man happy till he dies, free of pain at last."
In another sense, and I have made the mistake of it already in my language, we think of Death as something happening to other people. They die, the people around me die - so sad, let's extend them a prayer - but the idea that I will die rarely enters our consciousness and even if it does, we suppress it so quickly and viciously that it may as well not have been there.
These two curious forms of Death is vividly captured in Tolstoy's short but captivating read 'The Death of Ivan Ilyich.'
Ivan Ilyich lives a life that he deems fairly well. But in his process of dying, he looks around himself and on his life to find of so many elements that makes no sense to him anymore. Things that he would have swept under the rug if not for the reality of his impending demise forcing his mind.
Again, there is an easy mistake to be made in thinking of Ivan Ilyich's story as deep and sad but it's deep and sad precisely because it potentially is a story about you and me and all of us!
Short but impactful read. Will recommend!