The Death of Ivan Ilyich - Memento Mori

Death is the only certain thing in the whole universe. Between me, you, Ivan Ilyich, we will all go back to where we belong: the soil. Death is inevitable.

Ivan Ilyich was a judge, focused his entire life on accumulating as much wealth as possible, moving from one job post to another, upgrading curtains and high-end furnitures, inviting prominent figures to his humble abode – The regular ambitious and vain person we can all see, or even reflect.

One day, a pain appeared in the left part of his abdominal area. Long story short, he was diagnosed with terminal kidney cancer.

First half of the book described how hollow and shallow the funeral was. A somewhat “close” friend who did not even weep, a wife who focused more on the life insurance payment, and how it all went by so quickly. It seemed like all of his suffering is all for nothing, which was exactly what he kept questioning to God in the second half of the book.

The slow, painful, and agonizing physical and mental pain that Ivan Ilyich had to endure until his inevitable death made him realize that he did not really know what all of this suffering was for. Why did God give him the disease? Was he living the “correct” way of life? What was it all for? Was it all for nothing?

He passed without ever getting the answer to all of his questions. He is just dead.

We might not know what the answer will be for our lives either.

All we can do is to live.

– Dyl