The last time I saw my father at home was on Christmas. My mother had already decided to place him in the assisted care facility on New Year’s Day. My father was told of the decision, and was none too happy about it at the time he was told. But on Christmas morning, he was in a reasonably reasonable attitude. He barely remained awake long enough to sit in his family room chair for the duration of the gift-openings.

Christmases had been increasingly simplified rituals at the Humphrey household for several years. Back in the ’70s, we still had stockings, big and little gifts, a live tree, and a homemade turkey dinner on the fine china.

By 2003, this had devolved to an aluminum tree (kept in the attic during the off-season), a single set of gifts, and a simple meal of sliced ham, canned fruit salad, and store-bought pies, served on the everyday dishes. My father did not partake of the meal, except for a small serving of mashed potatoes. By then, he’d been reduced to drinking Ensure shakes and snacking on cookies and angel food cake. He looked amazingly weak and tired. At the time, he was sleeping about 20 hours a day.

One year later, he was even more degraded. All-over body pains had made him restive. He kept rising and retiring throughout the day and night. Even with a walker and a hospital-style bed lifter, he became increasingly unable to perform his last self-assigned task—getting to the bathroom on his own.

I’d always known him as a fountain of meanness and spite. To see him as a sad prisoner of his own failed body made me realize, thankfully not too late, he’d always been just a human being as flawed as us all.