I have at last got busy about Mummy's grave...The inscription I should like is:
.......................EDITH MARY TOLKIEN
..............................1889-1971
.................................Lúthien

: brief and jejune, except for Lúthien, which says for me more than a multitude of words: for she was (and knew she was) my Lúthien.

July 13. Say what you feel without reservation, about this addition. I began this under the stress of great emotion & regret - and in any case I am afflicted from time to time (increasingly) with an overwhelming sense of bereavement. I need advice. Yet I hope none of my children will feel that the use of this name is a sentimental fancy. It is at any rate not comparable to the quoting of pet names in obituaries. I never called Edith Lúthien - but she was the source of the story that in time became the chief part of the Silmarillion. It was first conceived in a small woodland glade filled with hemlocks at Roos in Yorkshire (where I was for a brief time in command of an outpost of the Humber Garrison in 1917, and she was able to live with me for a while). In those days her hair was raven, her skin clear, her eyes brighter than you have seen them, and she could sing - and dance. But the story has gone crooked, & I am left, and I cannot plead before the inexorable Mandos.