Published: January 2, 2025

Bruce Willis and his wife celebrate 17th anniversary of battle with dementia: ‘Do it again’

By Movieguide® staff

Bruce Willis and his wife Emma Heming Willis celebrated their seventeenth wedding anniversary over the weekend.

“17 years of us ❤️,” Emma wrote in the caption of a recent Instagram post.

“Anniversaries used to bring excitement – now, if I’m honest, they stir up all the emotions and leave a heaviness in my heart and a sinking feeling in my stomach,” she continued. “I give myself 30 minutes to sit in the ‘why him, why us’ and feel the anger and sadness. Then I shake it off and return to what is. And what is… is unconditional love. I feel blessed to know that and it is because of him. I would do it again and again in a heartbeat.”

In 2022, Emma and her family announced that Bruce was “diagnosed with aphasia, which affected his cognitive abilities, and was retiring from acting.” About a year later, his family announced that Willis disease had progressed I developed frontotemporal dementia. “Heming Willis, 46, has been her husband’s caregiver for the past two years,” TODAY reported.

READ MORE: ‘A FAMILY DISEASE’: BRUCE WILLIS’ WIFE ON ACTOR’S DEMENTIA DIAGNOSIS

She told Town & Country that one of the first signs that something was wrong was when she noticed her husband began to stutter.

While Willis “always stuttered but was good at covering it up,” it got worse over the years.

“When his speech started to change, it seemed (so) it was just part of a stutter, it was just Bruce. “I never in a million years thought it would be a form of dementia for someone so young,” she explained.

“I say that FTD whispers, it doesn’t scream. It’s hard for me to say, ‘This is where Bruce ended and this is where his illness began to take over,'” Emma added.

READ MORE: BRUCE WILLIS’ FAMILY SEE ‘GREAT LOSS (AND) GREAT BEAUTY’ IN BATTLE WITH DEMENTIA