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.

Soetoro-Ng returned to her teaching job on Monday at La Pietra — Hawai'i School for Girls but has not spoken to the media since the death of their grandmother and her brother's Election Day electoral college landslide.

But in a post-election e-mail sent to friends last week, Soetoro-Ng wrote of the whirlpool of emotions surrounding both her grandmother's death and her brother's success — and of the need to then unplug for a while with her husband, Konrad, and their 4-year-old daughter, Suhaila, on O'ahu's North Shore.

(She told a friend that he could give a copy of the e-mail to The Advertiser.)

In the subject line of the e-mail, Soetoro-Ng wrote, "love!"

She said she had been flooded with e-mail messages "of both congratulation and condolence. ... There's a wide swatch of emotion cutting through me, sometimes swirling, never simple ... a briny mixture of elation, sadness, determination, regret, pride, hope, fatigue. You can imagine ..."

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."

TIME TO REGROUP

Soetoro-Ng then quickly turned to her brother's election as the nation's 44th president.

The "relief I feel has everything to do with the profound faith I have in Barack's leadership and vision for this country," she wrote. "I wept tears of joy for all of us on Tuesday. He may not be a perfect man. Certainly, he has often said that he'll likely be an imperfect president, but he is a good man, a smart man, a disciplined soul who balances temperance with determination and courage. We've made a great choice, I assure you."

She goes on to celebrate the victories of local politicians and thank supporters.

"Of course, part of me wanted to go, thank and celebrate with the many, many local folks who supported and contributed so much to this campaign, but the other part of me needed to go underground for a bit," Soetoro-Ng wrote.

She wrote of her plans last weekend to stay at a friend's beach house on the North Shore with Konrad and their daughter.

"In addition to wrapping my tutu's life, I need to prepare to teach my pumpkins, as I resume work next week," she wrote. "... I am going (to) read through dozens of potentially useful new resources to use with the kids, while I look up at the too-seldom seen canopy of stars, and snuggle with my husband and daughter."