NOW YOU ARE A MISSING PERSON

A woman reflects on love, loss, and life in a moving memoir that blends poetry and prose.

Hayden tackles some of life’s biggest themes—from sex and motherhood to grief and art—with a mix of poems and short essays. She traces her journey from the Los Angeles artist community of the 1970s to later childrearing with section titles that guide readers through her emotional state, including “Dislocated,” “Unavailable,” “Landed,” “Endangered,” and “Situated,” among others. At the heart of the memoir, however, is the notion of death. After a series of sudden losses—including that of her husband, who died in an avalanche while skiing in 2008, leaving Hayden to raise their 11-year-old son alone—the author spent much of her time examining her feelings of grief, both within herself and in the context of the larger world: “This has always been / a ‘Quest’ story / with its circuitous route, / its point and its shoot, / its natural disasters / Still running to the men / who were once / boys without fathers.” Occasionally, the poems and essays are preceded by a quote that gives context to the topic at hand; “The Family Table,” for instance, offers a thought from Rabbi Yehiel E. Poupko before the author’s reminiscences about her Jewish upbringing. Various recurring characters, both major (her parents, husband, son) and minor (a psychic, unnamed lovers), appear throughout the work to provide a consistent narrative thread. Casual mentions of Hayden’s acquaintanceships and friendships with various poets, songwriters, and artists give readers an intriguing peek into her unconventional life.

Even when the author writes in prose, her words have a lyrical edge; her scraps and fragments of stories always seem poised to take off in flight: “When I was nineteen, my heart had a head-on collision with a once famous matinee idol, twenty-five years my senior. He had the boots, the breath, the space in his step. He had the rugged, feelingless behavior.” Hayden is skilled at imbuing even the simplest of words with resonant meaning, which gives the work a haunting quality of searching for something just outside one’s reach. This occurs when she discusses religious clarity (“He’d thought sitting in the Orchestra Pit at synagogue / would bring him closer to God, but the choir, with its rinah u’tefillah / —temple songs written to open the heart—pushed him away”) or testing boundaries (“I was an anomaly in the West Valley, a trickster with a two-spirit nature, Technics turntable and a Barbie suitcase, jam-packed with personal belongings….And I was a bolter, always running away, but just for a little while”). A sense of rawness permeates the memoir, which hits all the more starkly when punctuated with sweet moments, such as memories of her father’s sweet tooth or of sneaking clove cigarettes at Sunday school. As readers roam through accounts of joys and tragedies in Hayden’s life, a solid narrative begins to take shape—one that inspires even as it plumbs the depths of anguish.

A poignant tale of grief and hope that stirs the heart.