The Death of Ivan Ilych

The 'Death of Ivan Ilych' was probably one the most morose short stories I have ever read. I found Ivan's struggle first with his mystery illness and then with his iminent death to be extremely depressing. I think part of it was because Ivan's struggle was so internalized, lonely and rageful. Other than his manservant's assistant, Ivan had no one to share his true feelings of despair and fear of his iminent death with. Also, just as I'm sure his pain was driving him nuts, when I was reading about about it, I felt as if someone was gnawing at my flank with a blunt screwdriver. But what made me pity Ivan the most, was his own sad sad sad assessemnt of his life. There'salways this end of life ritual you read about in books or see inmovies, how people closely reflect on their lives when their life iscoming to an end. Ivan's assessment was full of self doubt,hopelessness and regret. It was a total FYL [Fuck Your Life] moment. The short story overall would have been wrist slitting for me if itwasn't for the ending. When Ivan finally had a epiphany of sorts, a "light at the end of the tunnel," whatever it was, it was such a gosh dang relief. Finally, after his seemingly endless bitch fest, angry tirades and despairing outbursts, Ivan found some measure of peace.

The lesson I learned about this cautionary tale is 'don't fuck with the money.' Kidding kidding. Just fyi, that's a direct quote from P-diddy to his 'making the band' contestants. It was his way of telling those kids from the hoods to be diligent and determined. I'm digressing too much. Anyways, the lesson I learned is 'don't fuck up your life.' The saddest scene from the book was when Ivan was reviewing his life, his life was so fucked up that the only true semblence of happiness he could come up with was during his childhood. Reading that scene made me flashback on my life. Despite my paltry 26 years, there were quite a few pretty distinct happy memories I could think of. Even if some of those happy memories are surrounded by sadness, the happiness pops out all the better. As I was doing this little assessment of my life, I cried a little bit, partly because I'm imagining that on my deathbed, I'll be having those same memories again. And partly because Ivan got it right. Childhood is truly where most of the genuine happy memories are. It's seems like as you age more, happy memories seem more generic, more artificial, and less fullfilling. But my goal is to not fuck up my life, so hopefully, despite the poorer quality of happy memories with age, I'll still make a hell lot of them.