OBSERVER Photo by Damian Sebouhian Rose (Colopy) Sebouhian singing “Amazing Grace” in Danville, OH, during the 50th anniversary memorial of her brother Steve Colopy’s death in the Vietnam War.

By DAMIAN SEBOUHIAN

dsebouhian@observertoday.com

Since moving back to the area last year, hardly a week goes by when I don’t meet somebody, who, upon learning my last name, asks, “Are you related to Rose Sebouhian?” After responding “Yes, Rose is my mother,” the next thing that’s shared is a sentiment I’ve heard my entire life: “She has such a beautiful voice.” Or some derivation of the same. “She sang at my wedding,” or “She sang at my mother’s funeral,” or “I go to church just to hear her sing.” Nobody describes my mom without mentioning that incredible voice. Legend has it that my Mom was singing notes long before she could walk or speak. I dare imagine that mom was singing while still in the womb.

I hate to admit this, but I wasn’t always a fan.

See ROSE, Page A7

Growing up, it seemed she was constantly playing the piano or the guitar and filling the house with music that, while none of my peers were around, I could force myself to tolerate. Truth be told, I secretly loved her singing, especially the quirky traditional folk songs I’d hear nowhere else, but it wasn’t cool to think it was cool. And did she have to come into my school and sing in front of the entire class? Apparently, yes, she did. I remember once in third or fourth grade, mom setting up her guitar in Mrs. Nagel’s class and while tuning it, I fidgeted with dread.

“This is Damian’s favorite song,” she announced proudly and the entire universe turned to look at my face burning hotter than a supernova.

“Ohhhh, the-fox-went-out-on-a-starry-night,” she belted out with bright enthusiasm and I dropped my head into my arms.

Bright, unabashed, soulful enthusiasm. That is how she used to sing, and today at 75 years of age, her voice remains as clear and resonate as ever. Those fortunate enough to know mom beyond her singing, the way I do, can fully appreciate that her voice is simply an extension of how she lives her life.

With bright, unabashed, soulful enthusiasm.

Those are qualities that, as a shy and awkward kid, I was embarrassed by and did not at all welcome. I put up a wall so that I couldn’t fully be affected by my mother’s incessantly positive energy. How anybody could be so … confidently brazen, I wondered judgmentally, was beyond me.

I was 15 years old, a sophomore at Dunkirk High School, when my shyness took a darker turn towards depression. I couldn’t see the point in school or in life in general. Nobody, I assumed, could possibly comprehend my pain and alienation, least of all a Pollyanna like my mother.

Whenever my brothers or I would get caught in an act worth being punished for in some way, my father’s response was to assign us an essay to write (he was an English professor after all…) Mom’s punishment was much simpler: “You’re going to Church with me this Sunday, young man!”

So that’s where I was one Sunday morning, a brooding 15 year old, sitting in a pew, my arms crossed, my head down, my mood sullen. Church sucks. God sucks. Everything sucks. You people are all living a lie. Those were the cheerful thoughts I was thinking, when my mother started to sing.

“Some say love, it is a river, that drowns the tender reed.

Some say love, it is a razor, that leaves your soul to bleed.

Some say love, it is a hunger, an endless aching need.

I say love, it is a flower, and you, its only seed.”

It wasn’t the tune or the lyrics themselves that reached into my chest and tore into my heart. It was her voice, a trembling powerful force of tenderness that carried the melody and animated the light of meaning within the words. I understood them in a way simply reading them on a page could never accomplish. I felt the meaning and the only way I could express my comprehension was to break down in tears.

I was so surprised by my own outpouring of emotions, I quickly exited the church and took shelter inside the family car where I continued to sob and weep.

For all of my life up to that point, I refused to believe that my mother had any insight into the darker things of life like melancholy or ennui. I had to face the fact that my mother was more than just my mother. She was a full-fledged, complicated, interesting, thoughtful, emotional, loving, human being.

My mother’s bright, unabashed, soulful enthusiasm wasn’t born from an innocent naive avoidance of pain. My mother knew pain. After all, she had lost her brother in the Vietnam War. She had heard all the horror stories of women she counseled while volunteering with the rape crisis hotline for battered women’s shelter she was instrumental in creating. She has always spent a large portion of her life and energy comforting the needy, the suffering, the forgotten.

She married my father, a man who was abandoned by his parents as an infant and raised on the gritty Depression-era New York City streets.

My mother rejuvenated my father’s spirit and single-handedly reunited him with the mother that had abandoned him so they could renew their relationship and start over.

When I was born, I nearly broke my mother’s heart. I came into this world dead. She wailed at the site of my lifeless body as the doctors worked their magic.

I was revived the way I would be 15 years later in the church listening — truly listening — to a voice that invites a sincere vulnerability to the pain of the world while reminding us in the most powerful of tones that we are never alone.

Thank you Rose Marie Colopy Sebouhian for all that you have been and all you are. I look forward to your next song.

Happy Mother’s Day.