- Celebrities Bruce Willis' wife: "I don't want it to be misunderstood as meaning I'm fine because I'm not"
"Are you aware of what is happening to you?" "It's hard to tell." These are actress Emma Heming's last words on Bruce Willis' deteriorating health. The 68-year-old actor was diagnosed last year with aphasia, a disorder that affects the ability to communicate and forced him to quit acting. Months later, already this year, it was confirmed that he had worsened and that he suffers from frontotemporal dementia.
Since then, Emma Heming had not given television interviews until she has attended, this Monday, the Today program of the NBC network. He has done so when a week begins to raise awareness about this ailment and in the presence of the director of an association that promotes fundraising for medical research.
"Dementia is hard," said Emma Heming, 45. "It's hard for the person diagnosed, also for the family. And that's no different for Bruce, or me, or our daughters. When they say it's a family disease, it really is."
Excited, the 45-year-old actress added that being aware of the disease, its symptoms and limitations, makes attention to Bruce Willis more bearable. "To understand what's going on, to be able to accept it. It doesn't make it any less painful, but being aware of what's happening to Bruce makes it a little easier."
Bruce Willis and Emma Heming have two daughters together: Mabel, 11, and Evelyn, 9. For them, according to Emma, the difficult situation is teaching them "how to love, how to care, and it's something really beautiful in the midst of sadness."
- Bruce Willis