I Stumbled Upon a Headstone in the Woods and Saw My Childhood Photo on It – I Was Shocked When I Learned the Truth
We’d only lived in rural Maine for three weeks when our quiet new beginning cracked open.
While mushroom hunting behind our cottage, our dog suddenly growled—and my eight-year-old son, Ryan, disappeared. We found him laughing in a hidden clearing surrounded by headstones.
One stopped me cold.
Set into the stone was a ceramic photo of a little boy.
It was me.
Four years old. Same face. Same eyes. Same yellow shirt I barely remembered from childhood photos. Beneath it was a date:
January 29, 1984. My birthday.
That night, I told my wife what I’d never fully understood myself: I was adopted. My birth parents died in a fire. I’d been found outside the house with a note pinned to my shirt—Please take care of this boy. His name is Travis.
The next day, the library pointed me to Clara, a woman nearing 90 who’d lived here all her life. When she saw my photo, she knew immediately.
“You had a twin,” she said. “Caleb.”
The fire destroyed the cabin. Three bodies were found. One child was never accounted for.
Tom—my birth father’s brother—never stopped believing one boy survived.
He placed the headstone… hoping.
When I met Tom, he took one look at me and whispered, “You look just like your father.”
A week later, I returned to the clearing and left a card at the stone.
For Caleb.
The brother I never knew—and the reason I finally knew who I was.
