Bethenny Frankelmade an emotional post to honor her late on-again, off-again boyfriend Dennis Shields on the 1-year anniversary of his sudden death.
“Dennis insisted we adopt biggy AND smallz for my daughter Peanut,” theReal Housewives of New York Citystar, 48, wrote, referencing a nickname for her9-year-old daughter Bryn. “He simply couldn’t imagine separating them.”
Frankel went on to share that Shields was also the one to come up with their names.
“We racked our brains staying up late coming up with the perfect name for two dogs from the same litter with very different body types. Thing 1 & Thing 2 was an option but Peanut found it degrading. Lenny & Squiggy was a good one but I knew it would only appeal to the over 40 set. Then at 5am, Dennis was waiting for me to wake up and in his stronger than Tequila New Yawk accent said ‘BIGGY AND SMALLZ’ and two stars were born,” she wrote.
Opening up about the relationship Shields shared with the two dogs, Frankel wrote that “he loved these dogs and the feelings were mutual.”
Frankel added, “I am a different personand in a different emotional place than I was a year ago, and the wounds have begun to heal but the scar will remain on my heart forever. RIP, August 10. #Unforgettable.”
Frankel’s heartfelt post came one month after she sat down for theRHONYreunion, during which she said she was “doing well” andcontinuing to healfollowing Shields’ death.
“Itcomes in waves; there are delayed reactions. I really have moved away from it,” she said of the grief. “We had broken up many times. He was always in my life.”
“Truthfully, when you’re older, you don’t know if you’regoing to get your big fairytale,” the mother of one explained. “Because I had this security presence in Dennis, where if it was Thanksgiving and I was going to be alone I could always be with him, I wasn’t giving myself what I deserved in a relationship.”
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Though Shields, who wasfound dead in his Trump Tower apartmentlast August of a suspected overdose, proposed to Frankel andpresented her with a ring, which she proudly wore, she said that she never really considered them to be engaged.
“He proposed and I was saying … ‘Okay, I’m accepting this ring and let’s see.’
Frankelfirst met Shields nearly 30 years ago, but didn’t start dating him until 2016 — three years after she filed for divorce fromex-husband Jason Hoppy, Bryn’s father.
Frankelspoke to PEOPLE following Shields’ death last year,describing the grieving process as “very, very hard.”
“I love him very much,” she said. “It’s like [Hurricane] Florence, it’s a storm and you must go through it. It’s not one of these things you can avoid and you have to go through it and deal with it and hopefully, you come out stronger on the other side.”
Since his death, Frankel has found love again.
She’s currently datingreal estate developer and film producer Paul Bernon. The two made their relationship Instagram-official in December.
source: people.com
