Emma Heming Willis has had to adapt to life as not only a wife but as a caregiver of her husband, Bruce Willis, as he battles frontotemporal dementia (FTD). And one of those shifts is in the way they communicate.

“Bruce and I now have our own language, our own way to be with each other,” Heming Willis told The Sunday Times in an interview published on Saturday, September 13. “It’s just about sitting with him, walking with him, listening to him as he tries to verbalize in his own language. Hearing him, validating him. You know.”

Heming Willis, 47, stopped there, crying gently, according to the outlet. “I’m sorry,” she added, before going on to call FTD “an unkind disease.”

She continued, “It constantly takes. Even when you think it can’t take any more, it takes a little more.”

Emma Hemi

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