Why is this book / movie relevant to us?
The Movie: Iowa housewife Francesca Johnson (Meryl Streep) meets a traveling National Geographic photographer Robert Kincaid (Clint Eastwood), who has arrived in Madison County, Iowa to shoot its picturesque covered bridges. The two begin a four-day affair while her husband and children are out of town that reawakens long-lost passions and yearnings in Francesca. Kincaid confronts his own roving, rootless nature; he asks her to come [escape] with him.
Robert and Francesca never meet again. After her husband's death, Francesca attempted to contact Robert, but his whereabouts by then were unknown as he no longer worked for the National Geographic. Three years later, an attorney sends Francesca a package containing Robert’s belongings, including his cameras, his published photo book, and a letter. Robert has died and his ashes were scattered at the (Madison County) Roseman Bridge.
Robert and Francesca story is told through flashbacks. Her children learn about the affair from a journal she has left them after Francesca passes away. She requests to be cremated and her ashes be scattered at the Roseman Bridge. Her children are initially shocked by her story and request. They finally respect the love their mother had for Robert and agree to publish the love story.
__________________
1998 - Myself inside one of the Bridges of Madison County, on a snowy afternoon |
Many of us have secrets that our family's will discover. Maybe a not well hidden photo, a magazine, a box of cloths, a browser history of reading "Rhonda's Escape". Some may get to plan ahead (I helped one friend dying of cancer). However, more than likely something unexpected will happen.
As with Francesca's journal, the surviving family is thrush into realizing their mother had a secret. In the movie and book, not all of the children reacted kindly.
Do you want your children to see you as a fraud or a person who kept secrets? A person they did not know? Imagination can run amuck in the shadow of grief. Or would it not be better to be honest now with the option of explaining.
If you are not religious, your everlasting life is how you are remembered. How do you want to be remembered?
Amazon - The Bridges of Madison County by Robert James Waller (1992-05-03) Hardcover |
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