My mother attended her first pajama party when she was eighty-three years old. And that was because I decided to host it for her. As her health began to fail, her world became very small. Appointments with the physical therapist who guided her on short walks through the house had been canceled.

The nurse’s aide who’d gotten her into the shower and then later could only give her sponge baths at her bedside had been told not to come back. The prepared dinners from Meals on Wheels were stacked high in the refrigerator and were barely touched.

I packed a couple of suitcases, kissed my husband goodbye and headed out the door after Mom’s doctor let us know that there was nothing more to be done to treat the ovarian cancer. The cancer had metastasized and was spreading rapidly.

“Make new memories. Enjoy this time,” her doctor had said.

I kept that thought in mind during the road trip back home.

One morning, I raised Mom’s bed to a sitting position, pulled up a chair and we watched one of her favorite talk shows, The View. She’d always enjoyed the gossip, entertainment news, political banter, and clashing and barbs among the cohosts.

The women were talking excitedly about the vice-presidential debate to be broadcast nationwide that night. It was October 7, 2020. Vice President Mike Pence and Senator Kamala Harris would have their one and only debate before the presidential election on November 3.

Excitement had been building in our family for weeks, ever since Harris had been announced as Joe Biden’s running mate. Harris was our sorority sister. She, Mom, and I were members of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc., which has a largely African American membership across the United States and other countries numbering in the hundreds of thousands, undergraduates and graduate chapter members, women committed to service and sisterhood.

As the ladies on The View speculated on the Pence-Harris matchup and the debate’s outcome, I said to Mom, “Let’s have a pajama party.”

She gave me a weak smile. “How are we going to do that?”

Obviously, this would not be a typical pajama party, the kind Mom helped me pack for when I was little with lots of giggling, pillow fights, and plugging the Easy-Bake Oven in at 2:00 in the morning to make a pancake-size German chocolate cake. It would be an opportunity for Mom and me to have mother/daughter time, knowing that our time together would soon come to an end.

“We’ll have it right here.” I made a sweeping gesture with my hand around the bedroom. “I’ll take care of everything.”

“Okay,” she said. Her eyelids fluttered shut as she dozed for a nap.

Preparation would be simple. No food would need to be cooked; no popcorn popped, or bags of chips opened. Mom ate little and took in only as much liquid as she needed to swallow her pain medication and anti-nausea pills. No sleeping bags or travel were required. Party central would be Mom’s hospital bed brought in for her hospice care weeks earlier. Dad would stay on the upper floor in my old childhood bedroom. He was happy to do so. He was four years older than Mom and had lost most of his hearing. We’d have the volume on the TV much too low for him. There was no need to invite additional partyers. What was the old saying about “two’s company”?

That evening, about an hour before the debate, I changed into my pajamas and helped Mom get into hers. A sorority sister had given her pajamas after Mom’s return from one of her several hospital stays; the pajamas were pink and green, our sorority colors, with Mom’s name emblazoned across the back like on an athlete’s uniform.

I carefully eased the top over her head and the cute Afro she now had after her hair grew back once her chemo treatments had ended. As I awkwardly threaded her weak arms through the sleeves, I accidentally brushed my knuckles across her nose.

“Oh! You broke my nose!” she cried out. Mom still had her sense of humor. I’d barely grazed the tip of her nose.

“Why did you break my nose?” she continued.

I decided to go along with the joke. “I’ll tell you what,” I said. “Since I broke your nose, you can break mine. Then we’ll be even.”

“I could never do that,” she said, becoming serious.

“Yes you can.”

I took her hand and balled it up into a fist and brushed it against my nose. “My nose is broken now, too, and it hurts really bad! Oh Mommy, I can’t believe you broke my nose.”

Mom laughed. “You’re so silly.”

I fluffed Mom’s pillow and pressed a button on the bed’s remote control so that she could sit up comfortably. I pulled out my cell phone and had us take selfies. Then, on impulse I said, “Strike a pose, Mommy, like you’re a model.”

To my surprise, she obliged, flinging her arms this way and that, raising her chin, tilting her head as I coaxed her along for different poses. Every so often she’d say, “Is this what you want? Am I doing it right?”

Mom had always been reserved. She grew up in the 1940s and ’50s in a multigenerational household in which children were taught to be seen and not heard. Scolding and punishment didn’t just come from her mother, but anyone else in the house—grandparents, aunts, uncles. Mom said she would often retreat to her room and read a book to stay out of the way and avoid anyone’s wrath. She mentioned this often as I was growing up, resentment laced in her words. This helped me understand why she often seemed so restrained.

I took one picture after another as the news commentators came on the TV screen to provide perspective before the debate would begin.

Decades earlier I don’t know if I could have convinced Mom to be spontaneously playful. But I feel she knew the importance of the moment and thought about how one day I wouldn’t have her anymore.

Mom’s world had become small, spatially, but I found a way for us to have a big party for two that would have us smiling throughout the evening. And making new memories.

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