WASHINGTON (AFP) — White House hopeful Barack Obama said in an interview Thursday he decided to travel to the bedside of his ailing grandmother because he wanted to avoid making the same mistake he made by not rushing to his late mother's side before she died.
When Obama's Kansas-born mother, Ann Dunham, passed away, I "got there too late," he told CBS television.
"We knew that she wasn't doing well but, you know, the diagnosis was such where we thought we had a little more time and we didn't. And so I want to make sure that I don't -- I don't make the same mistake twice," Obama said.
After a campaign stop in Indiana, Obama -- whose father was a Kenyan student when he met Obama's mother at the University of Hawaii -- was due to travel to Hawaii where the US senator was raised as a teen largely by his American grandparents who had resettled there.
His grandmother Madelyn Dunham, 85, played an instrumental role in his upbringing and he lauded her as an anchor of his life in his convention speech in August.
Dunham, who went by the nickname "Toot" -- a shortened form of the Hawaiian word for grandmother -- was like a mother to him, the Democrat said.
"Absolutely. ... It's very important to me. You know, my mother was a single mom, so she raised me with the help of my grandparents. And so my grandmother, my grandfather and my mom, they're really the people who took care of me all throughout my childhood.
"My grandmother's the last one left. She has really been the rock of the family, the foundation of the family. Whatever strength, discipline that I have, it comes from her," Obama said.
Asked if there could be political risk in taking time away from the campaign trail so close to the November 4 presidential vote, Obama said: "I think most people understand that if you're not caring for your family, then you're probably not the kind of person who's going to be caring for other people."
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