IVY
I believe in Ivy. She is my youngest sister. She died in a plane crash with my father when she was sixteen.
Ivy was born an old soul. There was something in her brown eyes that touched your core when she looked at you. When she smiled, you knew that she understood.
I lived at home for most of Ivy’s life. That was my good fortune. Our bedrooms were next to one another. We shared a common wall. Every night when we went to sleep I would call out to her through the wall “good night, love-love. Sweet dreams.”
That was my nickname for her. “Love-love” described how I felt about her. It was a double love. We were thirteen years apart in age. She was my younger sister and the daughter I would have wanted.
When Ivy was in high school, her English teacher wanted to promote her into Honors English. She came home and thought about it. As was her style she asked the family’s advice, pondered it and then came up with her own practical and clear decision.
On this issue she had decided to stay in regular level English because she felt that her teacher was excellent. She said that when he spoke, he made her want to “hug a dictionary.”
Ivy was 14 years old at the time of this particular insight.
She was the girl who befriended the underdog. If someone was sitting alone in the lunchroom and Ivy knew her, she would join her. If someone was made fun of by the group, Ivy would defend that person and protect his/her feelings. Her friends were a cross section of many different types of people.
Ivy was quiet and gentle. Often she would just observe others not missing a thing.
She was thoughtful, endearing and loyal. She was her own person, her own young woman. Unknowingly she had no time to waste. She only had sixteen years to do what she was going to do.
During a discussion with my mother, Ivy observed that there were many people who were quietly giving of themselves but who were never noticed or acknowledged for their generosity of time and their caring. After the plane crash that took her life, based on Ivy’s philosophy, my mother, sisters and I created The Ivy Lynn Chaplik Humanitarian Award at her high school. Every year we seek out a graduating senior whose actions demonstrate the principles of a humanitarian heart. This is not an academic award. Grades have no basis in our selection process.
It is in my family’s and her friends’ hearts that the beauty of Ivy lives on. It is in the new hearts of strangers each year that her being is once again touched and that her beliefs continue to inspire.
I have been blessed with three sisters: Linda, Susan and Ivy. They are my treasures. They come from the same love from which I came. We are bound by DNA. Yet we are also connected by an invisible frame and foundation in which and upon which our lives have been shaped and implemented.
What happens when one of the four sisters goes away? Dies. Devastation and longing continue always. And then the magic happens. The unspoken focus among the three of us to keep our Ivy with us in life. If someone speaks of the three of us, in an almost naturally choreographed oneness, we answer “four”. “And she was the best.”
There will always be four. We are four. We exist as four. We loved and love as four.
We are four sisters in life and in death.
PUBLISHED Moondance Ezine (Inspirations) September 2006
Ivy was born an old soul. There was something in her brown eyes that touched your core when she looked at you. When she smiled, you knew that she understood.
I lived at home for most of Ivy’s life. That was my good fortune. Our bedrooms were next to one another. We shared a common wall. Every night when we went to sleep I would call out to her through the wall “good night, love-love. Sweet dreams.”
That was my nickname for her. “Love-love” described how I felt about her. It was a double love. We were thirteen years apart in age. She was my younger sister and the daughter I would have wanted.
When Ivy was in high school, her English teacher wanted to promote her into Honors English. She came home and thought about it. As was her style she asked the family’s advice, pondered it and then came up with her own practical and clear decision.
On this issue she had decided to stay in regular level English because she felt that her teacher was excellent. She said that when he spoke, he made her want to “hug a dictionary.”
Ivy was 14 years old at the time of this particular insight.
She was the girl who befriended the underdog. If someone was sitting alone in the lunchroom and Ivy knew her, she would join her. If someone was made fun of by the group, Ivy would defend that person and protect his/her feelings. Her friends were a cross section of many different types of people.
Ivy was quiet and gentle. Often she would just observe others not missing a thing.
She was thoughtful, endearing and loyal. She was her own person, her own young woman. Unknowingly she had no time to waste. She only had sixteen years to do what she was going to do.
During a discussion with my mother, Ivy observed that there were many people who were quietly giving of themselves but who were never noticed or acknowledged for their generosity of time and their caring. After the plane crash that took her life, based on Ivy’s philosophy, my mother, sisters and I created The Ivy Lynn Chaplik Humanitarian Award at her high school. Every year we seek out a graduating senior whose actions demonstrate the principles of a humanitarian heart. This is not an academic award. Grades have no basis in our selection process.
It is in my family’s and her friends’ hearts that the beauty of Ivy lives on. It is in the new hearts of strangers each year that her being is once again touched and that her beliefs continue to inspire.
I have been blessed with three sisters: Linda, Susan and Ivy. They are my treasures. They come from the same love from which I came. We are bound by DNA. Yet we are also connected by an invisible frame and foundation in which and upon which our lives have been shaped and implemented.
What happens when one of the four sisters goes away? Dies. Devastation and longing continue always. And then the magic happens. The unspoken focus among the three of us to keep our Ivy with us in life. If someone speaks of the three of us, in an almost naturally choreographed oneness, we answer “four”. “And she was the best.”
There will always be four. We are four. We exist as four. We loved and love as four.
We are four sisters in life and in death.
PUBLISHED Moondance Ezine (Inspirations) September 2006
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