As many people know, 79-year-old Eric Clapton lost his young son in a terrible freak accident, leaving him devastated.
Few people are aware, though, of the artist’s heartbreaking last vow to his 4-year-old son.
“He would still be alive if I hadn’t looked at the fax.”
On March 20, 1991, Eric Clapton’s life was permanently altered by a terrible tragedy: the death of his four-year-old son, Conor, in a horrifying accident.
Conor fell from a Manhattan apartment window on the 53rd floor while he was in New York with his mother, the Italian actress Lory Del Santo. Conor raced past an open window that had been left unlatched after a maid had just finished cleaning, and in a tragic moment, he plunged to his death.
“They had left the window open. Lory stated that Eric was in route to collect Conor.
Before I went to see how Conor was doing, I checked out the fax machine after hearing it. It was only a few seconds after the hour that I arrived. He was gone. He would still be alive if I hadn’t looked at the fax.
Conor’s life ended in one of the most tragic ways possible just a few weeks before his fifth birthday. When Clapton received the news, he hurried to the scene, even though he was elsewhere in New York at the time.
“Eric froze solid when I told him what had happened.” He appeared to have suddenly stopped working. He remained silent. Everything seemed so surreal. Eric and I lost our relationship when Conor passed away,” Lory remarked.
bought tickets to the circus.
Lory Del Santo and Eric Clapton were not together at the time of the incident. Lory and Conor went to New York to spend Easter with Clapton, and Lory had full custody of their baby.
Their first time spending an entire day together alone was on March 19, the day before the tragedy, when Clapton took Conor to the Long Island circus.
Unaware that it would be their final day together, Clapton had eagerly bought tickets to the circus, hoping to create priceless memories with his kid.
The author of Slowhand: The Life and Music of Eric Clapton, biographer Philip Norman, stated, “That sawdust-scented afternoon showed him what he’d been missing.”
Eric informed Lory that he planned to be a good father going forward when they got back to the flat and Conor was talking excitedly about the clowns and elephants.
Clapton also hoped to get Del Santo and Conor to move to London and live with him. The rock singer was excited to spend more time with his son and was looking to the future. He had promised him lunch at a local Italian restaurant and a visit to the Bronx Zoo the next day. Tragic events occurred that morning while Lory was getting ready and Conor was playing wildly around the flat, full of childlike delight.
But regrettably, disaster happened.
withdrawn from the spotlight
Tragically distraught, Clapton withdrew from the spotlight. Along with Conor’s maternal relatives from Italy, Eric Clapton carried his son’s body home from New York in the agonizing days after Conor’s passing in order to get ready for the funeral.
Conor was buried in Ripley, a tiny village in Surrey, England, which is Clapton’s homeland. Clapton grew up in Ripley, which is around 25 miles southwest of London and has always held a special place in his heart.
Overwhelmed by his sorrow, Clapton fled to Antigua after the service and rented a little home, where he lived alone for over a year. He talked about how, as a coping mechanism, he lost himself in music and hardly spoke to anyone.
I got hooked to this small Spanish string guitar I had when they went. I traveled to Antigua, leased a small cottage in a village, and spent nearly a year there playing this guitar and swatting mosquitoes all day while attempting to heal myself and avoiding much interaction with the outside world,” he said.
Music became his haven throughout that period. He repeatedly performed and rewrote songs in an attempt to find a way to let his emotions out. Clapton remembered, “I was able to come out because all I could do was write and play these songs, and I re-wrote and re-performed them over and over again until I felt like I had made some sort of move towards the surface of my being.”
Conor’s letter
He eventually turned his grief into music by working with Will Jennings to co-write Tears in Heaven. Originally composed for a movie’s soundtrack, the song turned into one of his most intimate and heartfelt compositions, serving as a means of grieving and preserving Conor’s memory.
In the midst of this terrible loss, Clapton also got a letter from Conor, which broke him much more. With assistance from his mother, Lory Del Santo, the young child had penned his first letter to his father just days prior to the disaster. Tragically, the note didn’t reach Clapton’s London residence until after Conor passed away.
“The baby had learned to write a few words and he said to me, ‘Oh mummy, I want to write a letter to daddy, what shall I write?'” Lory recalled that painful moment with great clarity. “Well, write, I love you,” I said to him. That was written by him, and we sent it out like any other letter.
Eric and I traveled to London for Conor’s funeral after he passed away. I was present when, shortly after the burial, Eric opened his mail and saw that it contained Conor’s letter. I will never forget that moment.
