A heavy-hearted Barack Obama Friday said goodbye for perhaps the last time to the ailing grandmother who brought him up, who he said may not live the 10 days until the presidential election.
The Democratic nominee grabbed some precious time with Madelyn Dunham, 85, in her apartment complex in Hawaii, after stepping off the campaign trail for a day and a half and flying halfway across the Pacific to his native state.
He spent a total of seven hours with Dunham, who he affectionately knows as "Toot" after arriving in Hawaii on Thursday, and was due to hit the campaign trail again in Reno, Nevada on Saturday.
At one stage in the morning, a somber looking Obama emerged from the building for a solitary walk around his boyhood haunts, trailed by a lone Secret Service agent, before spying some reporters and heading back in an SUV.
Obama's decision to quit the White House trail so close to the election raised some eyebrows, but his wife Michelle and vice presidential nominee Joseph Biden picked up the pace.
"I'm still not sure whether she makes it to election day," Obama told ABC News of his grandmother, in an interview recorded before the election front-runner left the mainland.
"We're all praying, and we hope she does ... she's still alert, and she's still got all her faculties and I want to make sure that I don't miss that opportunity right now."
Michelle Obama said in the key swing state of Ohio that Obama told her he got his "'toughness from Toot.'"
"She taught him with her quiet confidence and that love and support that he could do anything," she said.
Dunham who is suffering from a broken hip, osteoporosis and other undisclosed elements is the last elderly relative Obama, 47, has left, after his mother died of cancer more than a decade ago.
That's sad. Hang with us just a little longer, Toot!
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