Rumer Willis, the eldest daughter of Bruce Willis and Demi Moore, marked Father’s Day with an emotional post on Instagram in which she told her followers that “today is hard” as her father continues to battle frontotemporal dementia. Bruce retired from acting in 2022 amid an aphasia diagnosis. His family announced his dementia a year later, writing on social media: “While this is painful, it is a relief to finally have a clear diagnosis.”
“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 Willis wrote on Father’s Day in a message to Bruce. “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.”
“I will be grateful for every moment I have with you,” Rumer added. “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.”
Emma Heming Willis, who married Bruce in 2009, also posted a Father’s Day message on Instagram in which she sent love “to all the dads living with disability or disease, showing up in the ways they can and to the children who show up for them.”
“What Bruce teaches our girls goes far beyond words,” Emma wrote. “Resilience, unconditional love, and the quiet strength in simply being present… But to be fair to myself, these symbolic days stir up a lot. I’m profoundly sad today. 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.”
Bruce Willis’ family, including Demi Moore, celebrated his 70th birthday at the end of March by posting rare photos of the retired actor on social media.
