Rumer Willis is reminiscing on old memories with her dad, Bruce Willis, as he battles with dementia.
“Really missing my papa today. 🥲,” Rumer, 35, wrote on Instagram on Monday, November 20, alongside a Instagram throwback photo of Bruce, 68, holding her as a baby
Bruce shares daughters Rumer, Scout Willis and Tallulah Willis with ex-wife Demi Moore and daughters Mabel and Evelyn with wife Emma Heming Willis. The actor’s older daughters have been vocal on social media about his health struggles. Last week, Tallulah, 29, reflected on her dad’s life before he was diagnosed with dementia in February.
“Damn, these photos are hitting tonight,” she wrote alongside a series of photos of her and her dad via Instagram on Wednesday, November 15. “You’re my whole damn heart and I’m so proud to be your Tallulah Belle Bruce Willis @babybruce #TBBW.”
In March 2022, Bruce’s family announced that he was retiring from acting after being diagnosed with aphasia. More than one year later, Moore, 61, shared that her ex-husband’s condition has progressed to frontotemporal dementia (FTD), which has no known cure.
More recently, Heming Willis gave an update on how the family is coping, opening up about feeling guilty over having access to “resources” amid Bruce’s health battle.
“When I’m able to get out for a hike to clear my head, it’s not lost on me that not all care partners can do that,” Heming Willis wrote in a November 11 article for Maria Shriver’s Sunday Paper. “When what I share about our family’s journey gets press attention, I know that there are many thousands of untold, unheard stories, each of them deserving of compassion and concern.”
She noted that she wants to be an “advocate” for others in hopes that it will help them “feel seen and understood.”
“I have so much more hope today than I did after Bruce was first diagnosed,” the entrepreneur wrote “I understand this disease more now, and I’m now connected to an incredible community of support. I have hope in having found a new purpose — admittedly one I never would have gone looking for — using the spotlight to help and empower others.”
Bruce’s support system also includes his former costars and colleagues. In October, Moonlighting creator Glenn Gordon Caron said that he has tried to visit Bruce as often as he can.
“My sense is the first one to three minutes [into my visit] he knows who I am,” Caron, 69, explained to the New York Post at the time. “He’s not totally verbal; he used to be a voracious reader — he didn’t want anyone to know that — and he’s not reading now. All those language skills are no longer available to him, and yet he’s still Bruce.”
