Martin Greenberg has angry memories of his father's death. Edward Greenberg was 82 when he died March 28 following a 10-year battle with Alzheimer's disease.

Edward Greenberg died in a Cordova, Tenn., nursing home, no longer able to recognize his family and needing help with life's most basic functions.

"The doctors were always in a hurry to put Dad back in the hospital," his son recalls. "Why? To cure him?"

In his living will, Edward Greenberg said he didn't want any heroic measures taken to extend his life.

For Dotty, his wife of 57 years, that meant saying yes to an intravenous line to deliver supplemental food and fluid, yes to supplemental oxygen and antibiotics to treat his pneumonia and no to machines to help him breathe.