A Family Goodbye Says

AS BRUCE WILLIS' COGNITIVE HEALTH CONTINUES TO DECLINE, EX DEMI MOORE, WIFE EMMA HEMING AND HIS FIVE DAUGHTERS ARE CHERISHING EVERY DAY.

ENSCONCED in the passenger seat of a nondescript black car, Bruce Willis, wearing a black baseball cap and a striped button-up shirt, stared out of the vehicle’s open window. With one bodyguard behind the wheel and another in the back

seat, the former action star appeared wan and distant as he took in his surroundings during a 35-minute drive through Los Angeles’s Studio City neighborhood on Sept. 8. “He seemed relaxed,” an onlooker tells Star. “He didn’t get out of the car.”

It was a rare outing for the beloved Die Hard star. Two and a half years ago, the 69-year-old’s loved ones announced his retirement from acting after doctors confirmed he had aphasia, a brain disorder that robs a person of their ability to communicate. Less than a year later came another devastating diagnosis — frontotemporal dementia. Now, a source tells Star, “the disease has progressed to the point where his family worries they may not have much more time with Bruce left. They wonder whether he’ll even make it to his 70th birthday.” For his current wife and caretaker, Emma Heming, 46, and their girls, Mabel, 12, and Evelyn, 10, plus ex-wife, Demi Moore, 61, and their daughters — Rumer, 36, Scout, 33, and Tallulah, 30 — how much time remains “is always weighing on their minds.”

A DIFFERENT MAN

As they make peace with what’s to come, the family has prioritized making sure Bruce always feels safe. “He rarely goes out, but when he does it’s a carefully orchestrated operation,” explains the source.

“He needs help getting ready and getting to the car.” (“Thankfully, dementia has not affected his mobility,” Tallulah revealed last year.) Bruce has caretakers with him “24/7 who supervise him and make sure he’s OK and doesn’t get confused or flustered,” adds the source, noting the actor “has bodyguards to buffer him from the public.”