Photo is Saint Anne's Shrine
What Is In A Name?
When my fiery Irish-Italian mother bellowed my full given name—Stephen Kent Rand!—the house crackled. My older sister adopted the caustic tone too, an unforgiving four syllables full of fire when I made major mistakes or minor failures, Geez, what were you thinking, Stephen Kent Rand? And it was this very shame my name carried as if such syllables were burdens; particularly, if one was named after a saint with two quick, rather bland, sounds: Ste/phen. I preferred the first sound, Steve, which was far more gentle than the harsh, resounding, somewhat haunting sounds of childhood, STEPHEN!
A Mother’s Prayer memoir excerpt:
My grandmother, Florence, chose my mother’s name because of her fondness for a shrine on Isle La Motte in northern Vermont. Saint Anne’s Shrine was constructed in 1666 as a fort and chapel, established for the purpose of trade and the conversion of native people. By the time Florence started visiting the shrine as a child, it was transformed into a place for Catholic pilgrims who sought solace and a spiritual awakening on a bucolic island, which rested near the border of Vermont and New York along the pristine shores of Lake Champlain.
At the shrine on Isle La Motte there is a statue of Saint Anne, the mother of Mary, with the inscription: Remember Dismas the good thief of calvary. According to the Bible, Dismas was one of two thieves hanging on a cross next to Jesus. He asked if he could join Jesus in Heaven. According to the Gospels, Jesus quickly responded, You will join me in paradise.
Whether my mother forgave my father before she died will never be known. Whether she reconciled the fact she would not live long enough to be a grandmother, like Saint Anne, will never be known. Whether she entered the paradise she longed for will never be known. What is known is that she died alone at Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center in Buffalo, New York, on March 9, 1984.