Granny takes a fall for the team

[Sorry, I am being way too cynical].

Obama leaving campaign trail to visit ailing grandmother

Barack Obama with his grandmother Madelyn Dunham at his high school graduation in 1979. (Photo: Obama for America, via Associated Press)

Updated | Senator Barack Obama will suspend his campaigning for more than 36 hours this week to visit his grandmother Madelyn Dunham, who is gravely ill in Hawaii.

Mrs. Dunham, 85, all but raised Mr. Obama during his teenage years in Hawaii, and he has spoken of her often on the campaign trail. A campaign spokesman, Robert Gibbs, declined to specify the nature of her illness, other than to say it was quite serious. Mrs. Dunham lives in Honolulu.

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"My grandmother's the last one left," Obama told CBS "Early Show" co-anchor Harry Smith. The senator added, "She has really been the rock of the family, the foundation of the family." Obama didn't get to his mother before she died. "Yeah, got there too late," he says. "You know, I mean, it was sort of like this, in the sense that she had a terminal illness. We knew she wasn't doing well, but you know, the diagnosis was such that we thought we had a little more time and we didn't. And so I want to make sure that I don't make the same mistake twice."