Maya Soetoro-Ng was not in Chicago with her brother on election night even though he offered to fly the family into the Windy City for the results.  Maya knew exactly where she wanted to be on the night that millions of Americans will remember as a pivotable turning point in our nation’s history.

Maya Soetoro-Ng could have accepted her brother’s invitation to be at his side on Election Night in Chicago. But Barack Obama’s sister knew where she belonged.

As she had for much of the past eight years, Soetoro-Ng stayed in the two-bedroom apartment on Beretania Street where she had taken care of their maternal grandmother, Madelyn Dunham.

Dunham had died of cancer just two nights before at the age of 86, with Soetoro-Ng at her side. Then, on the day that Obama was elected as America’s first black president, Dunham’s koa urn arrived and Soetoro-Ng surrounded it with pictures of Dunham’s late daughter, Stanley Ann Dunham, Dunham’s grandchildren and her great-grandchildren, “all of us who benefited so much from her steady voice and hand,” Soetoro-Ng wrote

Maya also gives some insight into the strength and wonderful sense of humor of their grandmother Madelyn Dunham

Dunham, whom Obama called “Toot” after the Hawaiian word for grandparent, tutu, never showed self-pity or fear as she faced the end of her life, Soetoro-Ng wrote.

But Dunham could be wickedly funny.

“When she saw the number of flowers that had been sent to her,” Soetoro-Ng wrote, “she said, ‘Oh my … with all of this hullabaloo, it’s going to be embarrassing if I DON’T die.’ I gave her a chuckle and of course told her that I wouldn’t at all mind such an embarrassment, and then I invited her to stay and dance with me into the new year. She couldn’t stay, but she certainly tried, and defied expectations again and again.”

Maya gave permission to her friends to release the letter to the press.  Read the whole letter for yourself.