Bruce Willis's Daughter Tallulah Says He Still Remembers Her Amid Ongoing Battle With Dementia

"He still knows who I am and lights up when I enter the room."

Tallulah Willis is opening up about her father, Bruce Willis’s, frontotemporal dementia diagnosis like never before — including how he still “lights up” when she enters the room. In a new first-person essay for Vogue, published Wednesday, Willis’s 29-year-old daughter got candid about how she first noticed her father’s health was declining years prior to his original aphasia diagnosis in March 2022.

“I’ve known that something was wrong for a long time. It started out with a kind of vague unresponsiveness, which the family chalked up to Hollywood hearing loss: ‘Speak up! Die Hard messed with dad’s ears,’” she wrote. “Later that unresponsiveness broadened, and I sometimes took it personally. He had had two babies with my stepmother, Emma Heming Willis, and I thought he’d lost interest in me.”

Tallulah explained that while she originally met the changes in her father’s behavior with “avoidance and denial” due to a personal struggle with anorexia and body dysmorphia, her “lifelong” journey towards recovery has given her the “tools to be present in all facets of my life, and especially in my relationship with my dad.”

Related: Demi Moore Sweetly Serenaded Bruce Willis on His 68th Birthday

“I can bring him an energy that’s bright and sunny, no matter where I’ve been. In the past I was so afraid of being destroyed by sadness, but finally I feel that I can show up and be relied upon,” she wrote. “I can savor that time, hold my dad’s hand, and feel that it’s wonderful. I know that trials are looming, that this is the beginning of grief, but that whole thing about loving yourself before you can love somebody else — it’s real.”

Willis added that these days, her dad can be “reliably found on the first floor of the house, somewhere in the big open plan of the kitchen-dining-living room, or in his office. Thankfully, dementia has not affected his mobility,” adding that, “he still knows who I am and lights up when I enter the room.”

She concluded by stating that while she may have “​​hopes for my father that I’m so reluctant to let go of,” she’s happy to still be a part of this chapter of her family’s story.

“In April, my older sister Rumer had a baby girl, Louetta, and Bruce and Demi became grandparents,” Tallulah wrote. “There’s this little creature changing by the hour, and there’s this thing happening with my dad that can shift so quickly and unpredictably. It feels like a unique and special time in my family, and I’m just so glad to be here for it.”

For more InStyle news, make sure to sign up for our newsletter!

Read the original article on InStyle.