Bruce Willis' dementia diagnosis changed his and his family's lives. Emma Heming Willis is opening up about her marriage, Willis' frontotemporal dementia disease, and some of the experiences she's faced as her husband's primary caretaker.
In an interview with People, Heming Willis revealed that Willis' first symptoms of dementia were difficult to spot and that she would have never imagined the true source of them.
"It's very gray to know where Bruce stopped and where his disease kicked in. I started noticing his stutter started to come back, but I never in a million years thought that was a symptom of FTD," she said.
She revealed that her relationship with Willis began to change, making her believe that their relationship wasn't working anymore. "Conversations weren't really aligning anymore, and our relationship started to shift. It was hard to put my finger on why and what was happening," she said.
"I thought it was something I was doing in our marriage that was not working anymore," she concluded.
Heming Willis said that Willis' diagnosis ultimately gave her the clarity she needed to understand what was happening in their home. "There was relief in understanding, 'Oh, okay, this wasn't my husband, it was that this disease was taking parts of his brain,'" she said. "Once you hear that, I just softened."
Willis' life now
In 2022, Willis was diagnosed with aphasia, a diagnosis that later became frontotemporal dementia, a condition that affects people's personality, behavior, language, and speech. While Heming Willis has openly discussed her husband's condition with the public, earlier this summer, she revealed that Willis had moved out of their house to receive care at all times in a special facility.
In an interview with Diane Sawyer, Heming Willis said it was "one of the hardest decisions" she'd ever made.
"But I knew, first and foremost, Bruce would want that for our daughters. You know, he would want them to be in a home that was more tailored to their needs, not his needs," said Heming Willis.