"Some friends came down from Leigh and when they went to visit Graham's grave they saw the stag had gone," she said, struggling to hold back tears.
She said it was "not the sort of thing you'd expect to happen at a cemetery. This place is tapu, people should leave it alone."
She said the statue had been very firmly set in place - it had been bolted from underneath and glued. The holes where the statue once stood are still clearly visible.
"Someone must have worked really hard to remove it."
Mrs Dixon said she believed the statue had been stolen for scrap metal purposes but she had some small hope it might be sitting on someone's mantelpiece.
She asks anyone who has it to hand it in to Whanganui police. The stag is clearly identifiable - it has Mr Dixon's name, date of birth and date of death engraved on the bottom.