Bruce Willis received touching social media tributes from daughter Rumer Willis and wife Emma Heming Willis on Father’s Day. Both women referenced the actor’s frontotemporal dementia (FTD) and his ailing health in their messages.
“Today is hard, I feel a deep ache in my chest to talk to you and tell you everything I’m doing and what’s going on in my life,” Rumer began. “To hug you and ask you about life and your stories and struggles and successes. I wish I asked you more questions while you could still tell me about it all. But I know you wouldn’t want me to be sad today so I’ll try to just be grateful reminding myself how lucky I am that you’re my dad and that you’re still with me and I can still hold you and hug you and kiss your cheek and rub your head I can tell you stories.”
She noted that Bruce’s “eyes light up” when he sees her daughter, Louetta. “I will be grateful for every moment I have with you,” Rumer concluded. “I love you so much dad happy Father’s Day. Sending love to all those who are in the boat with me or have lost their fathers, to the single moms who are the dads too, to my future baby daddy…”
Emma praised her husband and other dads “living with disability or disease” for “showing up in the ways they can and to the children who show up for them.” She shares daughters Mabel, 13, and Evelyn, 11, with the Die Hard star.
“What Bruce teaches our girls goes far beyond words,” Emma continued. “Resilience, unconditional love, and the quiet strength in simply being present. This photo says so much. Love deepens. It adapts. It stays, even when everything else changes.”
Still, she admitted to being “profoundly sad” on the holiday. “I wish, with every cell in my body, that things could be different for him and lighter for our family. As they say in our FTD community, ‘It is what it is.’ And while that might sound dismissive, to me, it’s not. It grounds me. It helps me return to the acceptance of what is and not fight this every step of the way like I used to. Today, let’s celebrate the badass dads, those who are here, and those we carry with us.”
After being diagnosed with aphasia and retiring from acting in 2022, Bruce received his FTD diagnosis in early 2023. His family, including daughters Rumer, Mabel, Evelyn, Scout, and Tallulah, as well as Emma and ex-wife Demi Moore, have rallied around him amid his health issues.