Emma Heming spent Valentine’s Day with her husband, Bruce Willis, and took to Instagram to pay beautiful tribute to the legendary actor. In a post on the social media site, Heming shared a photo of her and Willis smiling close together with a snowy Niagra Falls view behind them. “Love is a beautiful thing,” she wrote in the post’s caption. “Wishing you all a Happy Valentine’s Day.”
Previously, Bruce, 68, was diagnosed with aphasia, but in 2023 it was revealed that he is living with frontotemporal dementia, or FTD. The Alzheimer’s Association offers a detailed explanation of FTD, which “refers to a group of disorders caused by progressive nerve cell loss in the brain’s frontal lobes (the areas behind your forehead) or its temporal lobes (the regions behind your ears). The association also says nerve cell damage caused by FTD can lead to “loss of function in these brain regions, which variably cause deterioration in behavior, personality and/or difficulty with producing or comprehending language.”
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Back in September, during an appearance on the TODAY show, Heming shared how the family’s experience has been. “Dementia is hard,” she said frankly. “It’s hard on the person diagnosed, it’s also hard on the family. And that is no different for Bruce, or myself, or our girls. When they say this is a family disease, it really is.”
TODAY co-anchor Hoda Kotb then asked if Willis is aware of his diagnosis, to which Heming Willis admitted that they can’t really be certain that he does. “It’s hard to know,” she admitted, later going on to share what is her role as a “care partner” for her husband.
“It’s important for care partners to look after themselves so that they can be the best care partner for the person they’re caring for,” Heming Willis said. She then added that Willis is “the gift that keeps on giving,” and that their daughters, Mabel and Evelyn, have learned traits such as “love, patience and resilience” from him. “It’s teaching them so much and how to care and love, and it’s really a beautiful thing amongst the sadness,” she said.
