On Father’s Day, Rumer Willis shared a heartfelt tribute to her father, Bruce Willis, who is living with frontotemporal dementia. In a deeply personal Instagram post, the 35-year-old actress expressed the emotional weight of the day and the longing she feels for the connection they once shared.
“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,” Rumer wrote, directly addressing her father. “To hug you and ask you about life and your stories and struggles, and successes. I wish I had asked you more questions while you could still tell me about it all.”
Bruce Willis stepped away from acting in 2022 after being diagnosed with aphasia. In 2023, his family revealed his condition had progressed to frontotemporal dementia (FTD), a rare and degenerative brain disease. At the time, the family noted, “While this is painful, it is a relief to finally have a clear diagnosis.”
Despite the grief, Rumer shared that she is focusing on the moments she can still have with her dad. “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,” she wrote.
“I will be grateful for every moment I have with you.” She also extended support to others facing similar losses or hardships. “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.”
Bruce’s wife, Emma Heming Willis, also shared a moving message on Instagram. She honored the quiet strength Bruce continues to show and offered compassion to families experiencing the challenges of illness. “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,” Emma wrote.
“What Bruce teaches our girls goes far beyond words. Resilience, unconditional love, and the quiet strength in simply being present.” She also acknowledged the emotional complexity of symbolic days like Father’s Day.
“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,” she shared. “As they say in our FTD community, ‘It is what it is.’… It helps me return to the acceptance of what is and not fight this every step of the way like I used to.”