Demi Moore is continuing to support her ex-husband and longtime friend, Bruce Willis, amid his dementia diagnosis. As the actor’s “dementia is progressing” and his family begins “to make peace with what’s to come,” a source told In Touch Weekly that Moore has “vowed to stay by his side.”
“Demi has vowed to stay by his side. Her heart aches as he struggles with this horrible disease. Demi knows that time is slipping away,” the source revealed, adding that Moore “will never abandon him or let him down,” adding that she “sees him at least once a week.”
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After first meeting at a 1987 screening of Stakeout, starring Moore’s then-fiancé, actor Emilio Estevez, Moore and Willis tied the knot at the Golden Nugget hotel in Las Vegas in November of that year following a whirlwind four-month relationship. They welcomed three children together – 35, Scout, 33, and Tallulah, 30. Although their legal union ended in 2000, the pair remained close, with Moore has continued to show her support for the actor after his family revealed in March 2022 that he was diagnosed with aphasia, and later, in 2023, frontotemporal dementia.
In addition to celebrating holidays and birthdays with Willis and their combined families, Moore has also reportedly been the “facilitator” and the one responsible for bringing the family together, the New York Post previously reported. Although Moore and Willis’ relationship ended, they both supported one another as they found new love – Moore with ex-husband Ashton Kutcher in 2005 and Willis with wife Emma Heming, whom he shares daughters Mabel Ray and Evelyn Penn with, in 2009.
With the marriages, “it only meant their family had expanded and there were more people to love and embrace,” according to In Touch Weekly‘s source, who added that “the whole family has pledged to do whatever it takes to make sure Bruce is comfortable and surrounded by love.”
Moore previously stated that since Willis’ diagnosis, she has learned to “take in the joy and the love” for who Willis is now, rather than who he was before the diagnosis, and speaking with Andy Cohen during a January 2024 appearance on the SiriusXM show Radio Andy, she shared a poignant message for others who have family members who have dementia: “I think the most important thing I could share is just to meet them where they’re at. When you let go of who they’ve been or who you think they [should be], or who even you would like them to be, you can then really stay in the present and take in the joy and the love that is present and there for all that they are, not all that they’re not.”
