The opening scenes of The Bridges of Madison County remind us of our mortality.
A brother and sister meet at the Iowa farmhouse they grew up in to settle their mother’s estate. They are dismayed to discover that she had asked to be cremated and to have her ashes spread from one of the town’s old covered bridges. As they go through the papers she has left them, they find out about an important secret—a four day affair she had had with a freelance photographer years earlier. He had already arranged to have her spread his ashes at the same place. In her initial note of explanation, Francesca Johnson writes: “It’s hard to write this to my own children. I could let this die with the rest of me, I suppose, but as one gets older, one’s fears subside. What becomes more and more important is to be known, known for all that you were during this brief stay. How sad it seems to me to leave this Earth without those you love the most ever really knowing who you were.” Continue reading The Bridges of Madison County: Erotic Fantasy, Woman’s Madonna/Prostitute and a Touch of Incest
