Son OK With Father Killing His Family

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Much has been made of this segment in a series Maria Shriver is conducting for NBC News on "The Age of Alzheimer's." Shriver's father died of the disease at age 95, and according to a news report, her daughter now lives in fear of her mother suffering from the same disease.

No one who has been a primary caregiver of someone with Alzheimer's Disease, or any other form of advanced dementia, can not understand on some level the pain and anguish Jim Crabtree and his family went through as Alzheimer's and other diseases of aging took their toll.

His mother was wheelchair-bound with severe joint pain and arthritis. His wife, 62, had been living with early-onset Alzheimer's for six years. And his father had recently been diagnosed with dementia.

We at Glenner today discussed informally the number of our family caregivers who said they could relate to Mr. Crabtree.

“My father shot my mother and then he shot my wife and then he shot himself,” Crabtree told NBC’s Maria Shriver. “It sounds like a horrible violent end, but in actuality it was an euthanasia that my father did. It was a great gift that my father was able to give me. He ended my Alzheimer’s and elder care issues at once.”

Like many Alzheimer’s caregivers, Crabtree felt stretched to the breaking point.

“It’s the kind of stretch you get living your life on a treadmill,” he said. “Just when you think you got things in order, something else comes up and you have to run a little bit farther and a little bit faster, but you never get ahead. You’re just scrambling around trying to figure out how you’re going to solve all these problems.”

Do you agree that the killings were a "gift"?