Bruce Willis’ wife Emma Heming says Christmas is ‘tangled in a web of grief’ amid actor’s dementia

Bruce Willis’ wife, Emma Heming Willis, has mixed feelings this holiday season amid her husband’s dementia diagnosis.

The 70-year-old actor’s family announced in 2023 that he had been diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia (FTD), only a year after they said he was “stepping away” from acting because he had aphasia.

Since announcing her husband’s diagnosis, Heming Willis has spoken often about his health and how it’s affected their two daughters, Mabel Ray, 13, and Evelyn Penn, 11.

In a blog post shared on Saturday titled “The Holiday Looks Different Now,” she wrote about how her feelings and holiday traditions have changed since her husband’s diagnosis.

“Traditions that once felt somewhat effortless require planning- lots of planning. Moments that once brought uncomplicated joy may arrive tangled in a web of grief,” Heming Willis, who is the Die Hard star’s primary caregiver, wrote.

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“I know this because I’m living it. Yet despite that, there can still be meaning. There can still be warmth. There can still be joy. I’ve learned that the holidays don’t disappear when dementia enters your life. They change.”

She recalled her husband’s holiday traditions, including how he used to make pancakes in the morning and go out in the snow and play with his young daughters. Although Heming Willis’ family doesn’t have that holiday routine anymore, the actor’s dementia “doesn’t erase those memories.”

She went on to describe the unexpected ways her grief has surfaced this year.

“It can arrive while pulling decorations out of storage, wrapping gifts or hearing a familiar song. It can catch you off guard in the middle of a room full of people, or in the quiet moment when everyone else has gone to bed,” Heming Willis wrote.

As she comes to terms with how different the holidays look this year, she said she’s making space for new memories with her family, without erasing the old ones.

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“There’s a misconception that if the holidays aren’t what they once were, they must be hollow. But meaning doesn’t require everything to stay the same. It requires connection. This holiday season, our family will still unwrap gifts and sit together at breakfast. But instead of Bruce making our favorite pancakes, I will,” she concluded. “There will be laughter and cuddles. And there will almost certainly be tears because we can grieve and make room for joy.”

Heming Willis’s blog post comes one month after she addressed criticism about moving Willis out of their family home due to the degenerative nature of his condition.

“F*** em! As Bruce would say,” she told the audience at End Well 2025, a Los Angeles conference focused on end-of-life care, in November.

She got emotional when she confessed that she was forced to make “impossible decisions” in the wake of her husband’s diagnosis.

“This is not how I envisioned our life,” she said through tears. “So I had to make the best and safest decision for our family. And I knew, by being honest and open about it, that it would be met with a lot of judgment.”