Bruce Willis’ wife, Emma Heming, is candidly reflecting on feeling sadness while navigating his dementia over the holidays.
Heming acknowledged that holidays “look different now” in a post on her blog. She noted that celebrating now take lots of planning, which didn’t need to occur before his dementia diagnosis.
“Moments that once brought uncomplicated joy may arrive tangled in a web of grief,” she wrote. “I know this because I’m living it.”
“I’ve learned that the holidays don’t disappear when dementia enters your life. They change,” she added.
The mother of two recalled Willis enthusiastically celebrating the holidays before his battle with frontotemporal dementia (FTD), primary progressive aphasia (PPA).
“He loved this time of year- the energy, family time, the traditions,” she shared. “He was the pancake-maker, the get-out-in-the-snow-with-the-kids guy, the steady presence moving through the house as the day unfolded.”
“Dementia doesn’t erase those memories,” she continued. “But it does create space between then and now. And that space can ache.”
She noted how the “Die Hard” actor can no longer do the things that he used to do.
“I find myself, harmlessly, cursing Bruce’s name while wrestling with the holiday lights or taking on tasks that used to be his,” she admitted. “Not because I’m mad at him, never that, but because I miss the way he once led the holiday charge.”
“Yes, he taught me well, but I’m still allowed to feel annoyed that this is one more reminder of how things have changed,” she continued.
She encouraged her followers facing the same challenges to embrace change and to try to make new memories.
“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 wrote.
“We’ll put on a holiday movie. There will be laughter and cuddles,” she continued. “And there will almost certainly be tears because we can grieve and make room for joy.”
“The joy doesn’t cancel out the sadness. The sadness doesn’t cancel out the joy. They coexist.”
Heming, 47, echoed those sentiments when she shared how she and Willis, 70, would be celebrating Christmas in an interview with People last month.
“Bruce loved Christmas, and we love celebrating it with him,” she said, before referencing one of his famous films.
“I think it’s important to put ‘Die Hard’ on because it’s a Christmas movie,” she quipped.
