Bruce Willis' Daughter Tallulah Reveals His Early Symptom of Dementia, Writes Moving Essay About Him
Bruce Willis‘ daughter Tallulah is opening up about her grief and the journey she and her family have been on while caring for her dad.
Earlier this year, Bruce‘s family announced that he had been diagnosed with a form of dementia called frontotemporal dementia. The family had announced Bruce’s earlier diagnosis of aphasia and retirement in March 2022.
“But I’ve known that something was wrong for a long time,” Tallulah writes in a vulnerable essay. She noticed that her dad was sometimes unresponsive but thought it was due to hearing loss. “Speak up! Die Hard messed with Dad’s ears,” she thought.
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“I admit that I have met Bruce’s decline in recent years with a share of avoidance and denial that I’m not proud of [but] the truth is that I was too sick myself to handle it,” she told Vogue, revealing her own struggle with body dysmorphia and anorexia nervosa. “I remember a moment when it hit me painfully: I was at a wedding… and the bride’s father made a moving speech. Suddenly I realised that I would never get that moment, my dad speaking about me in adulthood at my wedding. It was devastating.”
“Every time I go to my dad’s house, I take tons of photos searching for treasure in stuff that I never used to pay much attention to,” Tallulah said of how she is trying to preserve memories of her dad. “I have every voicemail from him saved on a hard drive. I find that I’m trying to document, to build a record for the day when he isn’t there to remind me of him and of us. He still knows who I am and lights up when I enter the room.”
Now, Tallulah admits she struggles with how to see her father. “I keep flipping between the present and the past when I talk about Bruce: he is, he was, he is, he was. That’s because I have hopes for my father that I’m so reluctant to let go of.”
If you didn’t see, Arnold Schwarzenegger recently spoke out about Bruce Willis retiring from acting due to dementia.