This is a short story or novella about a man's last days. It realistically portrays how easy it is to get completely preoccupied in the details of day to day life as if they were all-important...and the shock when something reminds you that one day it will end. Ivan Illich is a moderately well-to-do, very ordinary middle aged lawyer employed somewhere in the government bureaucracy. He has a wife, a grown up daughter, and young son, and until he contracts a serious illness, he was concerned with such things as upward mobility, promotions, office politics, his daughter's engagement, and the details of renovating and moving into a bigger, better apartment. Despite reassurances from the doctors, none of whose treatments help, Illich goes into a slow physical decline and experiences the isolation of the end of life, which he is not in the least prepared for, whose approach he can do nothing about, and which none of his worldly family and friends can understand.
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