Inside Bruce Willis’ Quiet Joys and Family’s Unbreakable Bond Amid Dementia Battle

These days, every special occasion feels all the more precious for Bruce Willis’ loved ones. On March 21, his wife, Emma Heming, made that clear when she took to Instagram to celebrate their wedding anniversary.

“Today marks 16 years with the love of a lifetime,” she began her heartfelt post, which included a photo of her and the Sixth Sense actor, 70, embracing. “We’ve shared monumental highs and devastating lows, and through it all, we’ve built something timeless,” she reflected. “I’m so deeply grateful for every chapter I’ve had with him — and all the ones we’ll continue to write, in our language of unconditional love.”

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It was a beautiful message honoring the wedding vows they exchanged in Turks & Caicos in 2009. Back then, the couple could never have imaged that in 2022, Emma, 47, and their girls, Mabel, 13, and Evelyn, 10, plus Bruce’s ex-wife, Demi Moore, 62, and their daughters — Rumer, 36, Scout, 33, and Tallulah, 31 — would jointly announce the Die Hard star’s retirement from acting after doctors diagnosed him with aphasia, a brain disorder that robs a person of their ability to communicate. Or that less than a year later, his condition would have advanced to the rare, memory-robbing condition frontotemporal dementia. Yet, despite the challenges, Emma and Bruce’s nearest and dearest have chosen to focus on the wins. “Bruce’s capacity for the kind of happiness he’s experienced in the past might be minimized due to his condition, but he still experiences that emotion,” a source tells Star, noting that the Emmy winner’s milestone 70th birthday two days earlier, on March 19, was filled with “many moments of joy.”

THEIR BIGGEST PRIORITY

Though his cognitive health has suffered, Bruce’s well-being has not. Thanks to Emma — his primary caretaker — as well as support from the kids, Demi and the extra help they’re able to afford, “Bruce has managed to maintain his quality of life,” the source confirms. “They encourage activities that are both meaningful and engaging for Bruce,” who enjoys it when Emma “makes his favorite pancakes or tacos,” says the source. He also likes to just drive around town. (In January, he was photographed stopping to shake hands with first responders fighting the Los Angeles County wildfires.) “Thankfully,” Tallulah told Vogue, “dementia has not affected his mobility.” Bruce also likes “seeing everyone talking and busy in the kitchen, or the dogs roaming about,” adds the source. “They can tell by the light that comes into his eyes, or his smile.”

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Touches and embraces are important, too. “The physical contact is helping to keep him plugged into them,” explains the source. “Emma will hold Bruce’s hand. Demi will hug him and talk to him. Rumer will put her daughter into Bruce’s arms.” Rumer is cherishing her dad’s bond with her little girl, Louetta, who’s nearly 2 — Bruce’s only grandchild (her dad is musician Derek Richard Thomas). The Armageddon star, Rumer shared last year, is “so sweet” with Louetta, branding him “a girl dad, through and through.”

HEART OF THE FAMILY

Tallulah has called Louetta the family’s “center of gravity,” while Emma is their courage. “They all marvel at her fortitude,” says the source. “She’s the one keeping the family together with her strength, her kindness and her warmth.”

She’s also the one keeping it real by sharing the truth about the challenges of caring for someone with dementia. Months after Bruce’s diagnosis, Emma confessed in an Instagram video that even with the financial resources her family has, she still struggles to cope. “I don’t want it to be misconstrued that I’m good, ’cause I’m not. I’m not good,” she admitted. “But I have to put my best foot forward for the sake of myself and my family.”

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While she’s doing her best, she’s also human and admits Bruce’s health crisis has taken a toll on her. In December, the model turned author — later this year, she’s releasing a book for fellow caregivers made another heartbreaking confession in an Instagram post marking 17 years since she first fell for Bruce. “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,” Emma admitted. To cope, she explained, “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 that, she insisted, is never-end- ing and “unconditional” love. As hard as it’s been, is and will continue to be, Emma added, “I’d do it all over again and again in a heartbeat.”

GROUP EFFORT

Ultimately, however, Bruce’s loved ones are all in this together. “They lean on and support one another,” says the source. “It’s brought their blended family even closer.” And they were beautifully enmeshed to begin with. Remarkably, Bruce and Demi became the closest of friends and set a new standard for amicable exes after ending their decade-long marriage in 2000. She attended Bruce and Emma’s wedding, quarantined with them during the pandemic and now, whenever she’s in L.A., “I go over every week, and I really treasure the time that we all share,” she said last year on The Drew Barrymore Show. It’s important to her to be there, she later told CNN, because “we’ll always be a family, just in a different form.”

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That doesn’t mean it’s been easy. As Star has previously reported, Bruce no longer recognizes some people, including Demi. But “holding on to what was” is a “losing game,” the Oscar-nominated star of The Substance recently said of accepting his condition. “Obviously, it’s very difficult, and it’s not what I would wish upon anyone, and there is great loss, but there is also great beauty and gifts that can come out of it.”

Emma feels the same way. Says the source, “Yes, there are moments when the tears come, knowing that Bruce will continue to decline, but amid all the loss, she’s determined to make every moment count.” As she defiantly declared last fall, “I’m not going to allow [this disease] to take our whole family down. Bruce wouldn’t want that. [Our kids are] going to see me fight for our family, have some hope and help the next family out there.”