If you aren’t already a bit anxious, frightened, or downright terrified of dying, reading Tolstoy’s classic novella will do the trick.  It is a book whose theme exemplifies Pema Chodron’s book title, “How We Live is How We Die”.

Ivan Ilyich Golovin had lived his life in such a way to ensure that it was “easy, decent, orderly, pleasant, and admirable”.  His work and playing whist were his refuges from an unhappy marriage and home, and he had risen steadily through the ranks of lawyers to become a appeals court judge in St. Petersburg, respected for his legal knowledge and thought.  His wife and he didn’t communicate; his relationships with his children were distant; his friendships were no deeper than playing whist; he had no close relatives.  As a result, when he became ill and even more so when it became clear that he was dying, he was alone, as alone as a man can be.  His wife and children persisted in denying the severity of his illness as he had done for several months.  His “friends” dropped away.  His doctors refused to be honest with him despite his inquiries.  The only person who expressed caring and concern was his servant, the butler’s assistant, the stoic muhlak, Gerasim.

As Ilyich was dying, he had an episode where he was alone and “wept over his helplessness, his terrible loneliness, over the cruelty of people, over the cruelty of God, over the absence of God.”  As if he were listening to ‘the voice of his soul’, he asked himself, “What do you want?” and he replied, “Not to suffer. To live.”  The voice responded, “To live?  How to live?” and he responded again, “Yes, to live as I lived before, nicely, pleasantly, and he started to go over in his imagination the best moments of his pleasant life.  But–strange thing— all those best moments of his pleasant life seemed now not at all as they had seemed then.  All—except for his first memories of childhood….And the further from childhood, the closer to the present, the more worthless and dubious were those joys…And further on still less of the good and the further, the less…and the further, the deadlier…And now that’s it, so die!…Maybe I did not live as I should have?”

And that last line summarizes Ilyich’s dying thoughts, but too late, way too late.  His abandonment in his final days was suggested in the book’s opening paragraph where his ‘friends’ learn of his death, not because they had been visiting and providing support as he lay dying, but via a death announcement in the newspaper, and their thoughts at that time and even when visiting the widow were focused on how Ilyich’s death would impact their careers and lives not on Ilyich’s death.

I began this review by comparing Tolstoy’s novella with Chodron’s book about dying and the bardo.  Here’s the final paragraph from Tolstoy as Ilyich is confronted with Light before he dies.  “So that’s it! he suddenly said aloud. What joy!”.  Here’s Chodron, “The bardo (i.e. transition) of dharmata (i.e.”suchness or things just as they are”) is a magnificent display of light and sound.  At first the projected reality of this bardo comes in the form of brilliant lights.”   Chodron in her Tibetan Buddhist tradition and Tolstoy who had recently discovered a religious fervor found commonality in their conception of what happens at the moment of death.  Whatever one’s own belief system, however, it is clear that we die as we live, either surrounded by our loved ones and friends, hopefully content in the life we led, or alone and tormented by the choices and errors we made in life.  As Deuteronomy 30:19 reads, “I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse; therefore, you shall choose life in order that you may live, you and your descendants.”