Bruce Willis’ family members have opened up about the grief they feel on the actor’s birthday this year, after it was announced he had been diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia (FTD) earlier this year.
A video shared by his ex-wife Demi Moore showed the Hollywood star singing happy birthday while surrounded by his daughters, Moore and his wife Emma Heming, before blowing out two candles on an apple pie.
Moore, 60, wrote alongside the Instagram post: “Happy birthday, BW! So glad we could celebrate you today. Love you and love our family.
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“Thank you to everyone for the love and warm wishes – we all feel them.”
“I have started the morning by crying, as you can see by my swollen eyes,” Emma Heming Willis, the wife of actor Bruce Willis, said in an Instagram video.
Heming Willis shared that she often receives messages that tell her “I don’t know how you do this,” to which she responds, “I’m not given a choice. I wish I was, but I’m also raising two kids in this, so sometimes in our lives, we have to put our big girl panties on and get to it.”
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“I do have times of sadness, every day,” she said. “Grief, every day. And I’m really feeling it today on his birthday.”
Willis was diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia in February.
This came after he was diagnosed with aphasia, which causes difficulties with speech, last year.
His family said last year that he was giving up acting as the condition was affecting his cognitive abilities.
The actor’s dementia diagnosis affects language as well as behavior and the ability to plan. There is no cure or intervention that can slow down the progress, so his symptoms will continue to worsen.
The 44-year-old model shared that the emotions came about while she was editing a video she planned on sharing for her husband’s birthday.
“I don’t know why I do that to myself because the videos are like a knife in my heart,” she explained. “But as much as I do it for myself, I do it for you, because I know how much you love my husband and it means so much to me, so thank you.”
