If “Twilight” were written on a road sign, we likely would avoid that path. Douglas and Becky Groothuis were dragged, against their will, onto the foreboding twilight path of Becky’s slow descent into the growing darkness of a rare form of dementia.

In Walking Through Twilight: A Wife’s Illness — A Philosopher’s Lament, Douglas documents the journey as the disease, primary progressive aphasia (PPA), ravages his wife’s once-brilliant mind and eliminates her once-stellar verbal acuity.

Twilight is not a perpetual state. It is a period of obscurity and ambiguity, moving us from day through the evening shadows and eventually into the blackness of night. The taunting and haunting of twilight is that the darkest is yet to come. The dawn of a new day follows night, but the night is long.

As a philosopher, Douglas addresses his anger, rage and the temptation to hate God in their twilight experience. Douglas provides a biblical framework of learning to lament through the lens of an angry, frustrated spouse. Both he and Becky grieve the loss of the safe and familiar as they are slammed by the reality of the dark and dreaded thing over which they have no control.

Douglas describes the process of lamenting, offering several practical insights.

First, those who take the Bible to be the knowable revelation of God about the things that matter most should discover the genre of lament in Scripture. Douglas suggests that Psalms, Lamentations and Ecclesiastes are our best sources. Second, lament requires a deep knowledge of God, the world and ourselves. Third, our grieving and our hoping find their meaning in our knowledge of God. Finally, biblical lament is not grumbling, which is selfish, impatient and pointless.

Our grieving and our hoping find their meaning in our knowledge of God.

It is in the process of learning to lament that hope emerges.

Douglas says, “my reflections have an aim: to live well with suffering in light of reality in God’s world.” He quotes the apostle Paul to support that suffering ultimately produces hope: ^“We … glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us” (Romans 3:3-5).

Hope is a discipline that can be cultivated and even celebrated.

Comfort in the twilight can emerge from various and unexpected sources. Sunny is a Goldendoodle who has been a vital part of the couple’s life together for several years, providing Becky with great comfort when she becomes distraught and agitated.

Douglas relates a humorous element: “For about a year after Becky’s release from the hospital, she could take Sunny on a walk by herself. But we put a tag on Sunny that says on one side, ‘Help. My mother has dementia.’ On the other is my contact information. After both were brought home in a police car, Becky and Sunny cannot go on walks by themselves.”

Arriving home on one occasion, Douglas heard Becky and her caregiver singing, “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so, little ones to Him belong, they are weak, but He is strong. Yes, Jesus love me. Yes, Jesus loves me … .” Douglas says, “I wept. Profundity and simplicity sang through debility. Becky cannot say these words. But she can sing them — and mean them.”

Although this book is painful to read, it is an essential resource and guide for caregivers and for those who minister to both patients and caregivers as they walk through twilight.

Book Reviewed

Douglas Groothuis, Walking Through Twilight: A Wife’s Illness — A Philosopher’s Lament (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2017).