Culture
Emma Heming Willis Explains the Way the Family Will “Adjust” for Holidays While Bruce Willis is Afflicted with Dementia
Emma Heming Willis Shares How Family Traditions Help Keep Bruce Willis Close During Holidays
Changing traditions and creating new memories around his FTD diagnosis
As Bruce Willis is battling frontotemporal dementia, his wife Emma Heming Willis says the family is making every effort to keep him included in holiday celebrations. “You have to learn and adapt and make new memories, bring in the same traditions that you had before,” she told People on Nov. 27. “Life goes on. It just goes on.”
It is now three years since the 70‑year‑old was diagnosed, and Emma and Bruce’s blended family — daughters Mabel, 13, and Evelyn, 11, and his older children Rumer, 37, Scout, 34, and Tallulah, 31, with ex‑wife Demi Moore — are putting their energy into being positive and keeping things the same while they take care of him.
“Dementia is hard, but there is still joy in it” — adapting traditions and making new memories
Emma Heming Willis shares that the family is committed to keeping Bruce a part of the holiday festivities as he is dealing with frontotemporal dementia. “You have to learn and adapt and make new memories, bring in the same traditions that you had before,” she told People. “Life goes on. It just goes on.”
“Dementia is hard, but there is still joy in it,” Emma affirmed. “I think it’s vital that we do not depict such a very negative image of dementia. We are still laughing. There is still joy. It just looks different.” She pointed out that even though Bruce was “a big fan of Christmas,” the family continues to celebrate, albeit their traditions have been modified to suit his.”
Emma Heming on how her daughters are adapting to Bruce’s FTD
Emma Heming Willis confided to Vogue Australia that Bruce Willis’s frontotemporal dementia has been “tough” for their young daughters as they “see him missing important milestones.” Nevertheless, she claimed that “kids are resilient,” and that she used to hate it when people said that, because “people didn’t understand what we were going through,” and that she and her children are still in the process of learning and adapting.
Also Rumer Willis has thought about the good things. In an Instagram Stories video dated Nov. 20, she mentioned that she is thankful that she “still gets to go and hug him,” and further explained that even though Bruce may not always recognize her, she can “give him the love, and I can feel it coming back from him,” and that she still finds “a spark of him.”
