I have been very miserable since - miserable not for an hour but for months on end - but I can still feel that hour's misery in its perfect desolatio… - Robertson Davies

When John Ryder, for instance, writes "I utter valediction to the author of my being," he means simply that he said goodbye to his mother.

"He blew his nose resoundingly. "B natural," said he, "my cold drops more than a full tone every hour. Obviously I am dying.

...What was wrong between Diana and me was that she was too much a mother to me, and as I had had one mother, and lost her, I was not in a hurry to acquire another — not even a young and beautiful one with whom I could play Oedipus to both our hearts' content. If I could manage it, I had no intention of being anybody's own dear laddie, ever again.