The story of Ivan Ilyich isn’t about his death; it’s about something worse, it’s about the realization that a life can be lived “correctly” and still feel completely wrong. 
Ivan Ilyich does everything society praises. He is a high ranking judicial official, essentially a judge and later a public prosecutor. His career is not driven by passion, justice or moral conviction, but by status, propriety, and advancement. The law is a ladder for him. Each promotion he gets is a step that confirms that he is living his life “correctly”. His work gives him respect, structure and distance from anything messy or emotional which may hold him back.
Just like his career, he does nothing for himself everything exists to earn the quiet approval of society. He marries because it is the “next step” not because he wanted to and certainly not out of deep love. At the time, his wife, Praskovya, is attractive, socially suitable and good for his public image. She fits perfectly in the life he is creating for himself. He chooses his wife the same way he chooses his furniture, just for appropriateness. 
He never had friends just some old acquaintances. His old acquaintances were inconvenient reminders of a time when life was lived more honestly, freely, when approval from society wasn’t the guiding force. Slowly, they were shaken off, replaced by polite acquaintances who reinforced the world Ivan and his wife were trying to construct. He traded warmth and familiarity for safety, and respectability.
When he falls ill, everything he had begins to crumble, his wife reacts with irritation and impatience more than genuine concern. She sees his illness as an inconvenience that disrupts her pleasurable life, she struggles to show compassion. Her attention is self-centered: she complains about everything, the trouble, the cost and the changes in her daily life. His daughter, Lisa, very young and innocent, she feels the tension but cannot grasp what is happening. Her presence offers a little emotional support. His colleagues, the first thing they thought of was how his death affects them, who will take his place? It was Gerasim, his servant, who knelt by his bed kissed his hand, not his wife, not his colleagues. Only Gerasim offered simple human compassion. 
His death revealed the hollowness of appearances, the quiet truth that only compassion and human presence matter. People around him were more concerned with appearances than with connection, and all the respectability in the world could not shield him from loneliness. Titles, possessions, approval of society all crumble under solitude and suffering. Real lesson is not to fear death, but to fear a life spent chasing approval of society while neglecting what makes us alive.