Tears in Heaven: Eric Clapton’s final promise before son Conor fell to his death

• Eric Clapton vowed to be a better father the day before his son Conor’s tragic death.
• Conor, aged 4, died on March 20, 1991, after falling from a New York skyscraper.
• The loss inspired Clapton to write Tears in Heaven, helping him process his grief.

Eric Clapton made a promise to be a better father the day before his son plunged to his death from the 53rd floor of a New York skyscraper.

The 4-year-old died on March 20, 1991 after a window was left open in an apartment being rented by his mother, Italian model Lory del Santo.

The tragic loss would go on to inspire Clapton to pen the moving tribute Tears in Heaven, which helped him to process his grief and would go on to be one of the rock legend’s biggest hits.

At the time of his death, Conor’s parents had separated.

Clapton had taken his son out the day before, the first time he had taken him out on an excursion on his own.

The pair went to the circus at Nassau Coliseum on Long Island, and the trip sparked something in the British bluesman.

According to biographer Philip Norman, “That sawdust-scented afternoon showed him what he’d been missing.

“When they returned to the apartment, with Conor chattering excitedly about the clowns and elephants, Eric told Lory that, from now on, he intended to be a proper father.”

They planned for Clapton to take Conor to the Bronx Zoo and then lunch at an Italian restaurant.

The next day, Norman writes that Conor was “careering around in a state of high excitement, impatient to see his ‘Papa’ again”.

While his mother was in the bathroom and he was in the care of a nanny, tragedy struck.

A janitor had been working on the windows in the high-rise apartment and one window in the living room remained open.

He called out to warn the nanny, but the little boy dashed past her before she could react.

Conor raced to the window he would normally lean against and look out – and fell to his death, still dressed in his red pyjamas and slippers.

“It was the most dreadful, horrible, unimaginable tragedy,” Norman writes in Slowhand: The Life and Music of Eric Clapton.

Lory Del Santo and Eric Clapton at their son's funeral. Photo / Getty Images

Conor was buried at St Mary Magdalen Church in Surrey, England, close to Eric Clapton’s birthplace.

Del Santo later told the New York Daily News that Clapton received a heartbreaking letter from his son just after the funeral.

“He said to me a few days before, ‘Mommy, I want to write to daddy. What should I write?’

“I said, ‘Write, ‘I love you, dad.’ He wrote that. The letter was then sent to Clapton’s address in London, where he got it just after the funeral.”