New! From the best-selling Souls of My Sisters series, a new book for young women featuring a dynamic new group of young sisters with hopes and dreams, fears and struggles, telling their stories of triumph over adversity for the generation coming up now. Check out an excerpt from the essay, PRIORITIES by Lashieka Purvis Hunter. 

Summer Reading Special:

An excerpt from the essay, Priorities by Lashieka Purvis Hunter from the new book,

Souls of My Young Sisters-Young Women Break Their Silence with Personal Stories That Will Change Your Life.

Dig in! and pick up the book for your summer reading.  

Priorities by Lashieka Purvis Hunter (pictured left), from the new    book Souls of My Young Sisters 

...The next day, Friday, around the same time that I would have been getting ready for my birthday bash, my whole family, including cousins, aunts, and uncles all piled into his room laughing and talking. A lot of us hadn't seen each other in years. My grandfather lay in his bed, quiet and still. My sisters and I sat in front of his bed chatting with cousins, looking at vacation photos from my uncle's digital camera. I looked up from the camera and over at my grandfather and he was staring at me. Just staring at my face and taking it in. I felt like leaning over to one of my sisters and jokingly saying, "Granddaddy has at eye problem." But I didn't. And I saw him give a little smile and then cast his eyes over to my sister and then a cousin after that.

            I left the room to get some air and went down to the kitchen after a relative told me there was some delicious vanilla ice cream cups in the freezer for the families. I came back and chatted with a few cousins when suddenly my mom and sisters ran out of his room, crying.

            "He's gone!"

            I hurried into the room and sure enough, he was gone, his eyes still open, but now focused on nothing in particular.

            Among the many tears that broke out in the room and family members clutching each other, I sat there, quiet. I had never been in the same room a person who had just died, and I guess I was in shock.  I thought about my husband, a cop, who'd seen dead people and seen people die many times and was probably immune to it now.

            I began to wonder what was my grandfather's last thoughts were. Was he scared? Was he telling God that he wasn't ready to go? Asking for more time? I suddenly figured out the reason he was staring at me and the rest of his family members. He was probably examining our faces, taking in every crevice, each eyelash, and remembering a special time we shared with him. Maybe a time when he tried to get us to eat fried squirrel or some other crazy game meat in his fridge, and we squealed and ran away laughing. He was storing us and those delightful times in his mind, reflecting on the life he lived and the experiences he shared with each of us.
            I finally got up and went over to him and kissed his forehead, which was surprisingly still warm, and then I touched his hand, which was remarkably cold. With tears trickling down my face, I silently apologized for being selfish and asked him to forgive me. I silently said I was sorry for not stopping back over his house a few months back. And as I sat back down to let another family member kiss and hold his hand, I realized that there was no other place I wanted or needed to be that Friday night, the night before my birthday.

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