Who is Ivan Ilyich from Necessary Losses and what is their importance?

Tolstoy's character, Ivan Ilyich, realizes he is dying and expresses his incredible disbelief and astonishment that this could actually happen to him. Ivan finds it impossible to accept that the logic of mortality could apply to him, when he is a real creature who had parents, a childhood, love, thoughts and emotions. Viorst uses a passage from The Death of Ivan Ilych to illustrate how hard it is to accept our own mortality, and how difficult it is for others to speak of it openly without denial.