This lie, a lie perpetrated on the eve of his death, a lie that was bound to degrade the awesome, solemn act of his dying to the level of their social calls, their draperies, and the sturgeon they ate for dinner, was an excruciating torture for Ivan Ilyich … He saw that the awesome, terrifying act of his dying had been degraded by those about him to the level of a chance unpleasantness, a bit of unseemly behavior; that it had been degraded by that very “propriety” to which he had devoted his entire life …. Nothing did so much to poison the last days of Ivan Ilyich’s life as this falseness in
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