Writing a Love Letter to Life

It has taken me twenty-five years to watch the entire film of “Bridges of Madison County” starring Meryl Streep and Clint Eastwood. It tells the story of an Italian War bride living in rural Iowa who meets the Worldly National Geographic photographer who has come to her small town to photograph the bridges close to her farm house. The film varies from the book because the narrative is told from the housewife, Francesca (Streep), instead of through the photographer’s (Eastwood) perspective.

The feelings and emotions I felt while watching were that of an emotional heart break and I felt like part of me died a little by the end of the film. But how did author, Robert James Waller, craft such a beautiful love story that was about a romance that only happens very rarely in many lifetimes.

The film begins when Francesca’s grown up children are going through their mother’s will and old belongings and they discover a secret affair their mother had when they they were teenagers. The film was about choices and how the mother had to make a decision between the well-being of her family and the well-being of herself as an individual.

The story had many layers and was more than a romance story, it was a story about having to decide between our realities and our dreams and making choices that we eventually regret—and that is how to write a love letter to life.


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