Emma Heming Willis feels closer than ever to husband Bruce Willis as he battles frontotemporal dementia.
“I feel like our love story has only grown and developed more,” she told People in an interview published on Wednesday, September 3. “The way I feel for Bruce is … It’s just on a more sort of cellular level.”
Frontotemporal dementia (FTD) can “gradually rob people of basic abilities — thinking, talking, walking and socializing — that most of us take for granted,” per the National Institute of Aging.
But despite Willis’ struggles with speech, Heming Willis, 49, said the pair communicate in other ways.
“Sometimes love does not need words,” she shared. “I can just sit there with Bruce and look at him, and we look at each other, and we laugh and smile, and that to me is more than anything.”
Above all, Heming Willis recognizes how precious time is as she navigates her life as a caregiver and mother of their two daughters: Mabel, 13, and Evelyn, 11. They often visit Willis, 70, at the home he lives in located near their primary residence.
“I love this time with him,” she noted. “Time is so fleeting, and I just love just being able to be present with him. Bruce is very present. I am so grateful that he is very much here, very much a part of our day to day. I think there has been so much beauty just to be able to meet him where he’s at, to enjoy this time with him.”
Heming Willis revealed that Willis is “still very mobile” and “is in really great health overall,” while speaking with Diane Sawyer on ABC last month.
“It’s just his brain that is failing him … The language is going, and we’ve learned to adapt, and we have a way of communicating with him, which is just a different way,” she remarked.
As she gears up for the release of her upcoming book, The Unexpected Journey: Finding Strength, Hope, and Yourself on the Caregiving Path, on Tuesday, September 9, Heming Willis also received support from Willis’ ex-wife Demi Moore.
“There is no roadmap for how to deal with this, and obviously, being the ex-wife, even though our family is very connected, is an interesting position, and so much fell on Emma to really figure this whole thing out,” Moore, 62, said during a recent podcast appearance. (Moore and Willis were married from 1987 to 2000 and share daughters Rumer, 37, Scout, 34, and Tallulah, 31.)
Moore continued, “I have so much compassion for Emma in this, being a young woman, there’s no way that anybody could have anticipated where this was gonna go, and I really think she’s done a masterful job.”
