It was actually not “Total Eclipse of the Heart.”
I went down a serious Bonnie Tyler rabbit hole when my dog died last summer.
Opal was my first and only dog. I got her when I was 46. She came into my life when my youngest child had just become a teenager, my oldest was ready for college, and it felt like the world I knew and life I’d built was slipping away. Halloween would come, and I’d see a Facebook ad for a corn maze and think, oh, this would be a fun family event—and then I’d remember that teenagers don’t want to do corn mazes unless it’s with their friends in a drunken stupor.
Opal changed everything. A goofy, barky, loving black Lab mix from Mississippi, her antics made everything—a car ride, a snowstorm, everyday life—fun again. When she died, suddenly and too soon, I was devastated. She was seven when we adopted her, and she was gone four short years later.
Which brings me to Bonnie Tyler. Like Brenda playing R.E.M.’s “Losing My Religion” on repeat after Dylan dumps her for Kelly, I needed a song to take me through the pain. I found Tyler’s “It’s a Heartache.”
Like most Gen Xers, I knew the Welsh singer first for “Total Eclipse of the Heart.” “Holding Out for a Hero” was a distant second. I was 3 years old when “It’s a Heartache” debuted, and it’s not a song you hear on radio stations that are a mix of today’s hits and yesterday’s favorites (that’s my jam). But something about the tune felt painfully familiar, and I played it over and over in those days and weeks (OK, months) after Opal’s death, like pressing a bruise.
Tyler’s gravelly, soulful voice (fun fact: her signature voice was the result of screaming after surgery when she was supposed to be quiet), coupled with the starkness of the lyrics, struck exactly the right chord. The refrain is heartbreakingly relevant to what I was going through, or anyone who is struggling with grief and heartbreak.
Where had this song been all my life?
I wanted more.
A thorough sift through Tyler’s discography revealed she’d never stopped making music. I didn’t find another song of hers that hit me quite the way “It’s a Heartache” did, but my music app suggested the banger “Only Love” when it came out just four months ago. Two months later, Tyler went into the hospital for emergency intestinal surgery. She never came home.
I stopped playing “It’s a Heartache” on a loop a few months after Opal died, but Tyler’s death last week catapulted me back down the rabbit hole. I even wondered (and researched) if it was possible “It’s a Heartache” was actually about the loss of a dog. There’s nothing to suggest it is (but no proof it isn’t!), but I did find that Tyler was a huge animal lover who fought to rescue animals used for testing and place them in loving homes, which made the song fit even more perfectly. Opal hadn’t been used for testing, but she had been rescued from a high-kill shelter. It’s part of what made Opal’s death so hard—knowing she had so many hard years and so little time with us—in a way I think Tyler would have understood.
We Gen Xers are in a unique place where dog dying is concerned. Some of us had dogs throughout our childhood—but many people are now losing the dogs that they first adopted on their own as young adults.
Many of us are also experiencing our first bout with the loss of the people closest to us. In our late 40s to early 60s, we’ve moved on from losing grandparents to losing parents, from grand-aunts and -uncles we barely knew to our parents’ siblings who were like second parents to us. And by this age, many of us have also endured the deaths of friends and peers before we expected to.
As I look back on the songs that helped me through the grief of losing Opal, I find that many “forgottens” top the list. Most were women. Some of them, like Tyler, were unjustly cast as one-hit wonders. Others had longer careers in the limelight, but their songs that spoke to me most were as often ones most people have never heard. If you ever find yourself in this position, here are five other Gen X songs with that haunting mix of lyrics, melody, and memory that makes music speak when nothing else can.
“Nothing Compares 2 U” by Sinead O’Connor
Like Tyler, O’Connor is unfairly dismissed as a one-hit wonder, but in this case, the hit is the one that fits. The title gets to the crux of it: Nothing compares to the love of whomever you lost.
“I go out every night and sleep all day,” and “I can eat my dinner in a fancy restaurant” hit me especially hard. Opal was a Velcro dog (being abandoned twice will do that to you), and it was hard to leave her to run errands, let alone go out for the night. There are always times that, as a dog parent, you curse the lack of freedom that comes with having a dog. But once they’re gone—you’d trade it all in a heartbeat. When O’Connor calls the doctor “a fool” for saying she “better try to have fun”—it’s a balm for anyone who’s been told “it’s just a dog.”
This song also hit home when I unexpectedly lost my best friend late last year. I have other friends, but none of them are her. Another friend told me this was her go-to song after her mother died. In her words, “Seriously, what can compare to the love of your mother?”
“Are You Alright?” by Lucinda Williams
When we lose people close to us, or a pet, who depended on us, that’s really all we want to know: Are you all right?
This takes on special meaning if your dog had a painful past. When Opal’s original owner went to jail for assault, his wife, a domestic violence survivor, took the opportunity to flee. She surrendered Opal at the animal shelter. Opal was briefly adopted and surrendered again. I couldn’t bear the thought of her being out there somewhere, feeling abandoned for a third time when she thought she’d finally found her forever home.
“What’ll I Do” by Bea Arthur
This might seem like a weird one for a Gen X list, but I’m not talking about the Frank Sinatra version. I’m talking about Dorothy Zbornak’s rendition at the Rusty Anchor in the seventh season of Golden Girls. Don’t remember it? Give it a listen. You’re welcome.
“I Had a Love” by Blue Angel
Blue Angel was Cyndi Lauper’s band before she went solo. Even if you don’t know this song, the familiarity of Lauper’s voice is a memory and a comfort.
“I Remember You” by Skid Row
This doesnt fit the mold of the others in that it’s not by a woman, but, like “It’s a Heartache,” once you listen to the lyrics after a loss, you’ll never hear the song the same way again. Most ’80s and ’90s songs are about unrequited love or losing someone who’s left you. “I Remember You” is different.
In this iconic rock ballad, no one bears blame, and everything was good and beautiful until the end. The first verse makes it clear: “…when you needed me, I came through.” Then: “Time after time, you were there for me.” “You said ‘I love you babe’ without a sound.” Finally, the gut punch: “We’ve had our share of hard times/But that’s the price we paid/And through it all we kept the promise that we made/I swear you’ll never be lonely.” That’s the promise, isn’t it? With Opal, that’s the pledge we made: You will never be lonely. The part you don’t fully let yourself think about is the unspoken ending: until one of us dies.
Maybe that’s why Bonnie Tyler’s song found me when it did. Grief has a way of sending you back through old music looking for words that fit, and sometimes the song you’ve needed all along has been sitting there for nearly 50 years, just waiting until you’re ready to hear it.
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