EXCLUSIVE: Bruce Willis' Devastating Decline — 'Dying' Actor's Wife Emma Heming Says Young Daughters Are Already Grieving Their Dad as They Understand 'The Inevitable'

Movie fans have long held Bruce Willis close to their hearts – a fondness that's only deepened since his family announced his retirement from acting in 2022 after he was diagnosed with aphasia, RadarOnline.com can reveal.

Just months later, the neurodegenerative condition, which impairs a person's ability to communicate, progressed to frontotemporal dementia. Rumer Willis, the Die Hard icon's eldest daughter with first wife Demi Moore, understands why people "always" want to know how her dad, whose films earned over $5.3 billion worldwide, is doing.

"It's kind of a hard one to answer, because the truth is that anybody with FTD is not doing great," she said on Instagram on November 20. "But he's doing OK in terms of somebody who is dealing with frontotemporal dementia."

Sadly, Rumer also revealed the 70-year-old doesn't always know who she is – a heartbreaking reality the actress-singer combats by pouring her energy into the moments they can still share. "I'm so happy and grateful that I still get to go and hug him," the 37-year-old said. "Whether he recognizes me or not, he can feel the love I've given him – and I can feel it back from him."

During the holiday season, Rumer and her tight-knit, modern family – Moore, 63, and her daughters Scout Willis, 34, and Tallulah Willis, 31, along with Bruce's second wife, model turned author Emma Heming, 47, and their girls, Mabel, 13, and Evelyn, 11 – are focused on making memories while they can.

"Everyone in the Willis family loves the holiday season. It's their favorite time of year," a source told RadarOnline.com. "They feel incredibly blessed to still have Bruce here."

With the unpredictability of his disease – the average life expectancy for someone with the condition, for which there's no treatment or cure, is seven to 13 years after symptoms appear, according to the Cleveland Clinic – Bruce's loved ones are painfully aware this could be their last Christmas together, says the source.

"Despite their sadness over Bruce's decline," the source explained, "they are leading with joy and gratitude and treating this time with him as a gift to be cherished."

Like Rumer, Heming is filled with thanks, even as she grapples with waves of anguish.

"I've had to learn to walk alongside the grief," she told Vogue Australia in October. "It's always with me. I can't shake it, but I'm going to breathe, and I'm going to be sad and all the feelings and emotions that I'm going to feel, but I am also not going to just allow it to be this one note."

For Heming, "the grief I feel over what's happening is rooted in the deep love I have for Bruce and my family. There is so much beauty in that."

Getting to this place wasn't easy – especially during the "chaotic" years before Bruce's diagnosis.

Emma's admitted things were so bad, she considered divorce.

"I felt like my marriage was crumbling," she's said of miscommunications and changes in her husband's personality. She'd ask herself, "'What is going on? This is not the person that I married. Something is just so off.' And I just couldn't figure it out."

Then everything finally clicked into place.

The Emmy winner, whose childhood stutter had also inexplicably returned, saw a neurologist who delivered the shocking diagnosis.

Though Heming was relieved she "finally understood that those crazy marital issues were not Bruce," she said, it pained her to know "they were the result of his brain being dismantled, taking part of the husband I knew and loved with it."

Bruce was sent home with just a pamphlet, leaving Heming, now a caregiver on top of being a wife and mother, to forge a path forward.

It was "traumatic," she confessed. Her feelings of helplessness led her to write a book for other caregivers, The Unexpected Journey: Finding Strength, Hope, and Yourself on the Caregiving Path, which was a bestseller this fall.

As RadarOnline.com has previously reported, Bruce no longer recognizes Moore.

As for Emma, she revealed he knows who she is, though not that she's the woman he wed 16 years ago.

"I don't need him to know that I am his wife and we were married on this day... I don't need any of that," she told ABC News in August. "I just wanna feel that I have a connection with him. And I do."

They still cuddle. They hold hands. They watch TV together. Yet everything has changed. This summer, Emma revealed she'd made a difficult decision: moving Bruce into a second home with a 24-hour care team.

"I knew first and foremost, Bruce would want that for our daughters," she said. "It was just important that they had a home that supported their needs and that Bruce could have a place that supported his needs."

Still, the girls "see him every chance they get," said the source, at the home Heming's described as "filled with love and warmth and care and laughter."

Mabel and Evelyn, like their adult half-sisters, understand the harsh reality.

"They know that Daddy's not going to get better," Heming revealed last year, and recently shared it's been hard on the girls. "They grieve. They miss their dad so much. He's missing important milestones. That's tough for them... I don't know if my kids will ever bounce back. But they're learning, and so am I."

She hopes they can see the beauty within the devastation. "What my girls are seeing is love in action," she's said, "the care we've built around Bruce and the people who show up for him."

And there are still moments when they catch a glimpse of the husband and father they remember.

"He's holding our hands. We're kissing him. We're hugging him," said Heming, who championed a pioneering new law, signed by New York Gov. Kathy Hochul in October, that establishes the first state FTD research registry to improve diagnosis and track the disease.

"He is reciprocating. You know, he is into it." And that, she added, "is all I need."

Among those showing up for Bruce is his ex, Moore.

The Brat Pack actress and the Sixth Sense actor set a new standard for amicable exes when they forged a deep friendship after ending their decade-long marriage in 2000.

"I go over every week, and I really treasure the time that we all share," Moore said last year. It's important to her to be there, she later explained, because "we'll always be a family, just in a different form."

She, too, has struggled with witnessing Bruce's decline, saying: "It's hard to see somebody who was so, you know, vibrant and strong and so directed shift into these other parts of themself."

She's continued to support Heming, even joining her in NYC on November 5 to watch Keith Richards, Norah Jones and more musicians perform to raise money for the Association for Frontotemporal Degeneration.

"I have so much compassion for Emma in this," the Substance star said, adding that she's done a "masterful job" of caring for Bruce.

As time goes by, Heming and the girls have been filling a notebook with the funny things, playful anecdotes and precious memories of the man they love to revisit after he's gone.

"You think you'll never forget these things," Heming said. "But then you do."

She's determined to "cherish every moment they still have," explained the source.

"But when the inevitable happens, she'll look back at it with nothing but love and laughter. That's what Bruce would want."