A Life Most Horrifying
Have you ever had to stop while reading something so that it could really sink in? This happened to me recently reading The Death of Ivan Ilyich. Leo Tolstoy opens the book on three civic functionaries, each a shallow bon vivant and careerist, learning of their friend’s death. “Ivan Ilyich had been a colleague of the gentlemen assembled [there] and they had all been fond of him. His post had been kept open for him, but” should he die, there was talk of the ensuing career moves. “And so the first thought that occurred to each of the gentlemen in this office, learning of Ivan Ilyich’s death, was what effect it would have on their own transfers and promotions and those of their acquaintances.”
It’s difficult to describe neatly what hit me upon reading this, but two important points of it are sadness and gratitude. Sadness was most prominent given how unaffected, in every way, their reaction is to their friend’s death. That they themselves are not grief-stricken, even slightly, makes one hope that Ivan Ilyich had other, better friends—and he did not; that it’s their first thought makes one wonder whether these men ever remember they will face their own death—and they don’t.
Apart from career consequences, “the very fact of the death of a close acquaintance evoked in them all the usual feeling of relief that it was someone else, not they, who had died. ‘Well, isn’t that something—he’s dead, but I’m not,’ was what each of them thought or felt.” The drama is that this same attitude pervades Ivan Ilyich himself. He and his friends share the same approach to life: propriety is a law above all, nothing is to be preferred to social convention, and a good game of whist covers a multitude of evils.
The difference is that Ivan Ilyich is dying and, eventually, cannot pretend otherwise, even while those around him do. While there’s one exception in the peasant household worker Gerasim who alone is unconcerned with sheltering either himself or Ivan Ilyich from the truth, the heart-breaking reality is that Ivan Ilyich feels he’s being lied to by everyone else. More concerned with their pet theories, his physicians disagree with each other on the nature and treatment of his disease. His friends don’t care to include him in their evenings or even see him because he proves an awkward bore and a drag when they want to have fun. His own family reproach him for his neediness which they ascribe to his insensitive aloofness. There is a beauty in the sadness that this man’s plight evokes because it cuts to the heart where one knows this is not how death is meant to be approached.
The other point, gratitude, was colored by the fact that we had recently gone through the death of our own Fr. Maurice Haefling. Externally, there was much in common with Ivan Ilyich: great physical discomfort, a clouded but growing awareness of death’s imminence, and the superficial ugliness of the body no longer working neatly. However, I got to be there for his Anointing of the Sick and Apostolic Pardon. These things were signs to me that Fr. Maurice’s approaching death was something looked-for, taken into account, expected. In our final moments, Christ and his Church do not shrink from the poverty of our dying as though it were something foul to be avoided, too unseemly for polite conversation, or too awkward a mischance to pity. Jesus himself underwent this poverty truly and fully, which no man other than he can say. He alone is able to say to us “I am with you always”. My gratitude was for how different my experience of Fr. Maurice’s death had been from that Ivan Ilyich’s so-called friends because I saw that he was truly accompanied by Christ, the Church, and us, his brother monks. I had gotten to pray for my brother, knowing full well that I will one day die too, moreover, that I am offered opportunities to die every day, to accept with Jesus and by his help the poverty of my being that is the gift of life and humanity. At root, this was an awareness of Christ with me as Fr. Maurice was dying, at my reading the story, and now as I write these thoughts.
Our Benedictine College family experienced another death early last month. Alex Lynch was a senior here at the college who had battled cancer for 6 years and passed away just one day after a special early graduation ceremony at his family’s farm home in Iowa in which he was awarded his degree. Tolstoy’s book has been a telling foil for this situation. From a worldly standpoint, both deaths are senseless because they cut short a good life, however Alex’s life was good in an altogether different and better way than Ivan Ilyich’s. Alex’s friends have been sharing how he suffered silently, never seemed too concerned about himself, and had a deep love and attention for others, driven by his faith, even as he underwent cancer treatment throughout college. That’s a far cry from how Ivan Ilyich spent most of his life and illness. At the end, Alex passed away encouraging those around him to grow closer to Christ. I’ll not spoil it, but as the end drew near, Ivan Ilyich struggled and railed against the oppressive fact that everything he had lived for was “not the real thing”. Alex spent his life like living and dying meant something, Ivan Ilyich was in danger of dying like death and life meant nothing. The former shows what makes for a truly happy death, and if the latter doesn’t show what makes for a life most horrifying, I don’t know what will.