Barack Obama is taking a break in the home stretch of his presidential campaign to visit his ailing grandmother in Honolulu because, he told CBS News, he doesn't want to be too late in seeing her, as he was when his mother died in 1995.

Obama is expected to arrive in Honolulu sometime this evening for a private visit with his grandmother, Madelyn Dunham. Dunham, who turns 86 on Sunday, broke her hip two weeks ago in a fall in the Punahou-area apartment where she and her late husband, Stanley, raised Obama.

After a hospital stay, Dunham is back in her Beretania Street apartment.

Obama is scheduled to resume campaigning Saturday morning in Nevada after his 36-hour trip.

In 1995 Obama was living in Chicago when his mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, was battling ovarian cancer. She died on Nov. 7, 1995, before Obama could get here.

"Yeah, got there too late," Obama told CBS. "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."

Obama also told CBS' Harry Smith that "My grandmother's the last one left. She has really been the rock of the family, the foundation of the family."

Advisers to Obama said he did not hesitate to make the trip when his sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng, called with the news. But the move has caused some mild anxiety among his aides, eased only somewhat by polling that shows the Democrat maintaining a lead over Republican John McCain.

The central political problem the trip presents is that it takes Obama off-message, his advisers said, diverting attention from the campaign's focus on the economy. Although Obama is bringing the traveling press corps with him — ensuring coverage of him as a dutiful grandson — he will miss events in the swing states of Iowa and Wisconsin.

Obama campaigned yesterday in the Virginia cities of Richmond and Leesburg, and added an event in Indiana to complete the red-state tenor of the week. He will leave for Honolulu from Indianapolis this afternoon.