Young Jimmy prayed, but nothing worked.

The 14-year-old boy cried as he knelt beside his bedside, clasping his hands together. He sobbed, imploring the heavens for a miracle.

“I’ll be good, God, for always,” Jimmy said, crying into his pillow. “If only You bring my mother back.”

But Jimmy’s mother was not coming back.

The year was 1956. Jimmy’s family was poor. His mother was dead after an operation in the hospital. His mother’s funeral had been the hardest thing Jimmy had ever endured.

It all started when Mary developed a pain in her breast that wouldn’t go away. The pain got worse. His mother disregarded the discomfort. She didn’t have time to deal with sickness. She was a poor mother, trying to raise her kids. There was no space for illness.

But her breast cancer wasn’t going away. And now Mary was gone.

Even so, God was God, wasn’t he? He could still bring Mary back if he wanted to, even though the funeral was over. Right? That’s what Jimmy thought. So Jimmy kept praying. He asked God to change His mind.

“Bring back my mother, please.”

But nobody heard him up there, it seemed. It was as though God were sitting behind a steel ceiling. Impassive, indifferent, and totally fake.

As the boy prayed, he felt his fettered beliefs slipping away like bits of paper in the wind. He was a smart kid. He knew it was impossible to bring someone back from the dead.

So Jimmy stopped praying. The prayers don’t work, he told his brother Mike. “They never work when you need them to.”

Then came a knock on his bedroom door. It was his dad. His father, the grieving widower. Back during the war, his father played trumpet and led a swing band. He played some piano, too.

Today, it was hard for Jimmy to visualize the old man as a musician. The only dad Jimmy ever knew was a raggedly overburdened guy who struggled to feed his family on a salary that was barely enough to feed a Labrador.

His father gave his son a gift. It was a big package. Jimmy tore open the paper. Beneath the wrapping was a mass of hard wood; six steel strings and a hunk of spruce.

“It’s a guitar,” said Jimmy.

His father had scraped enough cash together to buy a guitar. Father and son both wept as they embraced.

“Nothing can bring your mother back,” his dad said. “But this might help you grieve.”

It did help.That guitar, purchased for 15 pounds at a music store in Liverpool, changed Jimmy’s life entirely. Jimmy would pass hours in his room, playing his instrument, until it almost seemed as though his guitar was gently weeping.

He would sob as he played. And sometimes, on rare occasions, he felt as though his mother was in the room with him. As though Mary were touching her son on the shoulder, whispering words of wisdom.

I’m running out of room here. But anyway, now you know how James Paul McCartney got his first guitar.