Saying good-bye to Grandma

By GottaLaff

How do we, as a country, let Barack Obama know that we wish this wasn't happening:

For the last 21 months, she has followed the odyssey of his presidential campaign like a spectator in a faraway balcony.

She underwent a corneal transplant to see him on television. She reluctantly agreed to film a political ad when he needed to urgently reassure the voters about his distinctive American roots. She told him during one of their frequent telephone conversations that it might not hurt if he smiled a bit more.

And on Friday, Senator Barack Obama spent the day saying goodbye.

All we can do is take comfort in knowing he has the opportunity to be with her.

Mr. Obama has reached the closing days of his run for the White House without ever holding a formal biographical tour. (In a candidacy built on biography, and criticized for its celebrity, his advisers believed that sticking to substance, as well as an overseas trip in July, was a wiser course.)

But suddenly a biographical tour unfolded around him, as he made the brief visit here to see the woman who was a guiding force in his life and played a supporting role in his candidacy, from the Iowa caucuses to his marquee speech on race in Philadelphia and to his general election effort to win over voters in red states.

All we can do is send him our love and sympathy (Mrs. Madelyn Dunham, In Care of: Obama for America, Honolulu Headquarters, 1050 Alamoana Blvd., Ste. D2690, Honolulu, HI 96814).

His return to Hawaii was covered live on the local news, but his arrival was subdued. He did not wave to the cameras. There was no welcoming party on the breezy airport tarmac.

All we can do is think good thoughts.

“She can’t travel,” Mr. Obama said of his grandmother during the flight to Kansas in late January. “She has a bad back. She has pretty severe osteoporosis, but she’s glued to CNN.” A smile washed over his face as he spoke about the woman he calls “Toot,” his own shorthand for grandparent, which in Hawaii is Tutu.

Back then, when Mr. Obama was in the opening stages of his Democratic primary fight, he spoke wistfully about his grandparents, whose all-American biography had become urgently critical to establishing his own American story. He told of how his grandfather, Stanley Dunham, fought in World War II while his grandmother worked on B-29s at a Boeing plant in Wichita.

“My grandparents held on to a simple dream, that they would raise my mother in a land of boundless dreams,” Mr. Obama said. “I am standing here today because that dream was realized.”

All we can do is remember how lucky he was to have her in his life.

In only one commercial can Mrs. Dunham be heard speaking. It was taped before the Iowa caucuses, but also replayed during the Pennsylvania primary, as Mr. Obama sought validation for his appeal to older women voters. Her osteoporosis was advanced, and she hunched over so severely that it was difficult for filmmakers to capture her spirit and words of support for her grandson. Only a few seconds of tape was used in the ad.

In August, as Mr. Obama prepared to accept the Democratic nomination, he delivered a long-distance message to his grandmother in a televised speech.

“Thank you to my grandmother, who helped raise me and is sitting in Hawaii somewhere right now because she can’t travel, but who poured everything she had into me and who helped to make me the man I am today,” Mr. Obama said. “Tonight is for her.”

And November 4th will be for her, too.