Rumer Willis paid a highly emotional Father’s Day tribute to her dad, Bruce Willis.
The Die Hard star, 70, was diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia (FTD) in 2022. The neurodegenerative disease, where symptoms worsen over time, has no treatment or cure.
Willis has retired from acting to focus on his health. Rumer, 36, took to Instagram on Sunday, posting a carousel of photos with her father.
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“Today is hard, I feel a deep ache in my chest to talk to you and tell you about everything I’m doing and what’s going on in my life,” the actress wrote, regretting she had not asked her father more about his life.
“I wish I asked you more questions while you could still tell me all about it,“ Willis wrote. “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.”
Rumer, the eldest child of Willis and ex-wife Demi Moore, also mentioned her 2-year-old daughter Louetta in the post. Rumer split from Louetta’s father, singer Derek Richard Thomas, last year.
“Sending love to all those who are in the boat with me or have lost their fathers, to the single moms who are the dad too, to my future baby daddy...”
Bruce Willis’ wife Emma Heming Willis also took to Instagram to mark the “profoundly sad” Father’s Day. The couple share two daughters.
“Happy Father’s Day 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,” she wrote.
“What Bruce teaches our girls goes far beyond words,” she added. “Resilience, unconditional love, and the quiet strength in simply being present. Love deepens. It adapts. It stays, even when everything else changes.”
Emma Heming Willis will publish a book in September called The Unexpected Journey.
“This isn’t a memoir, it’s a self-help guide for caregivers, written to hold space for our heartbreak and our healing,” Willis wrote about the book inspired by her husband’s journey.
“Even in the depths of grief, there can be meaning, connection, and unexpected beauty,” she said. “I know this book will help others because it’s helping me.”
