Bruce Willis dementia update as daughter Rumer reveals 'deep ache in her chest'
16 June 2025, 16:15
Rumer Willis has paid tribute to her dad Bruce Willis in a heartbreaking Father's Day post.
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Bruce Willis' daughter Rumer Willis has given fans a health update on her dad after writing a heartbreaking Father's Day post.
The 36-year-old took to Instagram to pay tribute to her 70-year-old dad on Sunday 15th June, revealing she felt a "deep ache" in her chest on Father's Day amid his dementia battle.
Rumer began her post: "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."
She continued: "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."
Rumer added: "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 can watch the way your eyes light up when you see Louetta I will be grateful for every moment I have with you. I love you so much dad happy Father’s Day. 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, to my future baby daddy…❤️"
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Bruce's wife Emma Heming Willis also paid tribute to Bruce, writing: "Happy Father’s Day 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. Resilience, unconditional love, and the quiet strength in simply being present. This photo says so much. Love deepens. It adapts. It stays, even when everything else changes.
"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.
"Today, let’s celebrate the badass dads, those who are here, and those we carry with us 💙 Onward."
Bruce was diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia (FTD) in 2023 with his family previously announcing he had aphasia back in 2022.
Speaking about her husband's condition, Emma told Town & Country in 2024: "As his language started changing, it (seemed like it) was just a part of a stutter, it was just Bruce. Never in a million years would I think it would be a form of dementia for someone so young.
"I say that FTD whispers, it doesn’t shout. It’s hard for me to say, this is where Bruce ended, and this is where his disease started to take over."
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