Holocaust victim

The funeral was over. Eric Clapton had just buried his four-year-old son Conor. Then the mail arrived — and inside was a letter in a child's unsteady handwriting, written just days before Conor fell 53 stories from a New York skyscraper. The boy had only just learned how to write.

Conor had been sitting with his mother Lory when he decided he wanted to send his father a message. She told him to write "I love you." They licked the stamp together and sent it off, with no idea it would be the last thing Eric would ever receive from his son.

Lory was there when the letter arrived after the funeral.

"I was there when Eric received his mail," she later recalled. "And he opened it up and it was Conor's letter. That is a moment I cannot forget."

The weight of that loss was not something Clapton could carry in public.

So he fled.

He flew to the island of Antigua and rented a small cottage in a quiet community. No band. No fancy equipment. No contact with the outside world. Just one companion — a small Spanish string guitar.

"I went off to Antigua,"he later shared, "and I just swatted mosquitos all day and played this guitar and stayed there for almost a whole year, without much contact with the outside world, and I tried to heal myself."

Every day was the same. He sat in the heat and played until his fingers were sore. He wrote lyrics, threw them away, wrote them again. He played the melodies "again and again and again until I felt like I had made some sort of move towards the surface of my being."

Through that lonely, painful cycle, a song began to take shape.

It wasn't meant to be a radio hit. It was a father talking to his son in heaven.

That song was Tears in Heaven.

It won three Grammy Awards, including Song of the Year. People everywhere connected with it because grief is universal — because everyone knows what it feels like to lose someone they can't get back.

But for Eric, the awards didn't matter as much as what the music had given him.

A way back to the surface of life.

He went to an island to hide from the world.

He came home with a song that helped the world grieve.

The little boy who had just learned to write sent his father one letter.

His father turned that love into something that would never stop reaching people.

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The Last Judicial Hanging in The United States

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