The painful loss of his father Bartugh, a decent, hardworking Armenian, forced the young Suren into the position of father of the family. Later, his boundless willingness and ability to perceive, take others into account, understand and help strengthened and established that paternal position. Like the master of a house who joins in its joy with only one eye and one ear, while the other eye and ear turn outside, towards the winter of our cares, Aghababyan could never surrender to private, self-forgetting happiness, never yield to hopeless sorrow. He had no human right to do so: he was not his own, did not belong to himself. Sons of the same house may dislike one another, may even dislike their father; the father does not grant himself the right to feel the same towards them, and if he does, least of all to show it. The sons must not see that some are dear to him and others less dear. We saw him take offence, but never grow bitter; we saw his reproach, but never enmity. It was his lot to bring together, juxtapose and reconcile all, absolutely all, efforts, to make them one essential thing.
But he had been born a poet. He too would have liked to rebel and retreat, sin and repent, be one of the free sons of the house and follow his own will. He never became that. Enormous inner discipline always kept his poet in check and persistently forged the historian of literature: a historian without precedent among us, of the most difficult literature, for the hardest thing, after all, is the ability to see the present day within history. Yet his poetic nature never deserted him. It always helped the great literary scholar to understand quickly and respond quickly, helped him feel the breath of coming days with the poetic souls of the most delicate perceptions, and to be anxious, struggle and hope as much as they did, and more. Hatred never darkened a single one of his days. With his ear always alert, his eye always open and his great heart always open, he listened and saw unceasingly, renewed himself, cleansed himself, filled and overflowed unceasingly.
The clean, sunny apple orchard his father planted and cherished still exists, and perhaps those few trees are what keep that city the old, lovely Karakilisa. We want to believe that his beautiful eyes will look through ours, now bright with hope, now saddened, now silently questioning in their own way, towards the future of our homeland, our children. We want to believe that his hands, tired now, will strain through the hands of those of us still living and the many yet to come, will find the strength to push back oppressive despair and open to embrace the distant future of Armenian culture and its people. In his great, full-blooded, overflowing life, he was like that. He was within the arduous efforts of those being born, reborn, overcoming and surpassing themselves, was with them. And so he will remain.