Bruce Willis’ wife, Emma Heming Willis, posted a heartfelt update on the actor’s battle with frontotemporal dementia on the couple’s 17th anniversary.
“Seventeen years of us,” Heming Willis captioned a picture of herself and her 69-year-old husband standing in the ocean. “Anniversaries used to bring excitement—now, if I’m honest, they stir up all the feelings, leaving a heaviness in my heart and a pit in my stomach. I give myself 30 minutes to sit in the ‘why him, why us,’ to feel the anger and grief. Then I shake it off and return to what is."
"And what is … is unconditional love," she continued. "I feel blessed to know it, and it’s because of him. I’d do it all over again and again in a heartbeat."
Willis retired from acting in 2022 following a diagnosis of aphasia, a neurological disorder which affects a person’s ability to understand and express language. Last year, Willis’ Moonlighting creator Glen Gordon Caron revealed that the actor is “not totally verbal” and no longer able to read. “He used to be a voracious reader—he didn’t want anyone to know that—and he’s not reading now,” Caron said. “All those language skills are no longer available to him, and yet he’s still Bruce.”
Earlier this month, Willis’ ex-wife Demi Moore said that the actor is “in a very stable place at the moment” given what he’s going through. "I've shared this before,” she said, “but I really mean this so sincerely: It's so important for anybody who's dealing with this to really meet them where they're at. And from that place, there is such loving and joy.”
