The Death of Ivan Ilych

The previous history of Ivan Ilych was the simplest, the most ordinary, and the most awful."

Last Christmas my mother-in-law handed me a collection of short stories by Leo Tolstoy, the famous Russian author. I'd been looking for a new book -- something different -- to occupy my time during the holidays. The book was a perfect fit. I'd just finished a series of "lightweight" Christian fiction, which I thoroughly enjoyed, but felt I needed to read something more intellectual as penance. And to prove to myself how well-rounded I am, of course.

Tolstoy's work is easy to read and easy to understand, but thankfully it satisfied my need for something "deeper." In fact, the title story "The Death of Ivan Ilych" has haunted me for several days. It tells the story of a life lived most averagely and ended most commonly. It held the familiarity of my own life and the lives of everyone I know. It is the sad story of a man who lived because he was born, he lived just as every man of his acquaintance lived. Yet he lived for no good purpose.

"His official pleasures lay in the gratification of his pride; his social pleasures lay in the gratification of vanity. But Ivan Ilych's most real pleasure was the pleasure of playing 'bridge.' He admitted to himself that after all, after whatever unpleasant incidents there had been in his life, the pleasure which burned like a candle before all others was sitting with good players...and with good cards, to play a shrewd, serious game, then supper and a glass of wine..." - Leo Tolstoy

Then Ivan Ilych fell ill. As death drew closer he began to replay his life and to see the emptiness of it. He was tortured with the question "What's it for?" What was his life really about? Had he ever truly been happy? Life seemed senseless and loathsome. He couldn't understand the physical pain he experienced and the reality that his life would soon end without reason or explanation. And then the realization came. "Can it be I have not lived as one ought?" But he couldn't accept that it might be so... for he had lived just the same as everyone else, and wasn't that all that was needed?

The story gripped my heart because of the sadness, the hopelessness of a life wasted. But it haunted me because of the truth within it, for me. It leaves me almost at a loss for words, because of the heavy truth, the horror, that in many ways I am Ivan Ilych.

There are days I am caught up in the living of life, with no thought of the purpose. Making meals, cleaning house, working, sleeping, eating. I am concerned over what people think, so I decorate my home, attempt to keep in fashion, always striving, straining to be more. To look better. To fit the mold of society so that I feel as if I have arrived.

Arrived where? What is the destination? Death? What then? How awful to reach the end of my life and regret the way I spent my days.

But how to make it count for something more? What continues on, after death?

Ah, the answer is simple, if I will only remember it. It's the man behind the grocery counter. And the mail carrier who comes to my front door each day. The girl who cuts my hair. And the kid who rides his bike past my house for the twenty-seventh time on Saturday afternoon.

It's people. Do I see them? Do I love them? Do I tell them about Jesus?

How long do I have here on earth? God forbid that I should waste my youth on mindless pleasures that mean nothing in the end.

But if I learn to truly love people, I will escape the terror of Ivan Ilych. For I will know that my life counted for something.

"What's it for?" It's for eternity.