The holidays look different for the blended Willis family amid patriarch Bruce’s battle with frontotemporal dementia (FTD), primary progressive aphasia (PPA).
“You have to learn and adapt and make new memories [but] bring in the same traditions that you had before,” the actor’s wife, Emma Heming, told People at last week’s End Well 2025 conference in Los Angeles, adding that “life goes on.”
Though Heming, 47, acknowledged that “dementia is hard,” she insisted that “there is still joy in it.”
She elaborated, “I think it’s important that we don’t paint such a negative picture around dementia. We are still laughing. There is still joy. It just looks different.”
Heming did not specify what the family had planned for Thanksgiving but did tease their Christmas arrangements.
“Bruce loved Christmas, and we love celebrating it with him,” she said before quipping of his most famous film, “I think it’s important to put ‘Die Hard’ on because it’s a Christmas movie.”
As for the family’s everyday life, Heming — who shares daughters Mabel, 13, and Evelyn, 11, with Bruce, 70 — explained that it’s “very simple” and “always actually has been,” as they focus on “just being able to be present with him.”
Heming’s stepdaughter Rumer Willis recently made similar comments, telling her Instagram followers in a candid video that she feels “so happy and grateful” that she still gets to “hug him.” And “whether he recognizes [her] or not,” she believes he “recognizes the love,” which she feels in return.
Though Bruce is not the father she once knew, Rumer, 37, still sees “a spark of him,” which “feels really nice.” She is also thankful that she gets to bring her 2-year-old daughter, Louetta, to visit with her grandfather.
Bruce shares Rumer, daughter Scout Willis, 34, and daughter Tallulah Willis, 31, with his first wife, Demi Moore, 63.
The Willis family announced in March 2022 that the movie star had aphasia and would therefore be retiring from his decades-long acting career.
They revealed his FTD diagnosis the following February.
In August, Heming disclosed that she had made “the hard decision” to move her husband into a separate home close by, noting that his neurodegenerative disease requires round-the-clock care in a quiet, comfortable and safe environment.
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