A cruel, foul deed I just can’t imagine
- Mike Dewey: Life Lines
- June 21, 2025
- 77
When I returned to my hometown after a prolonged absence, I expected things would be different, that the place had changed.
I understood certain landmarks might have been razed, that favorite restaurants or taverns could have closed down, that housing might have sprung up, that new stoplights would appear.
And I also anticipated some people wouldn’t remember me, that friends who’d dropped off the radar would remain strangers and that a whole generation of folks I’d known had, well, died.
I mean I’d been away for nearly 25 years, and a lot of things can change in a quarter-century … it would be unnatural if they didn’t.
Bob Dylan addressed this very phenomenon in a song titled “Isis.”
She said, ‘Where you been?’ I said, ‘No place special.’
She said, ‘You look different.’ I said, ‘Well, I guess.’
She said, ‘You been gone.’ I said, ‘That’s only natural.’
She said, ‘You gonna stay?’ I said, ‘If you want me to, yes.’
It’s hard for me to fathom, almost impossible, that “Isis” is 50 years old. I was 20 when “Blood on the Tracks” was released, and it was then, as it remains to this day, my favorite Dylan album.
If you’re not familiar with it, “Isis” tells the story of star-crossed lovers who failed to make it work and separate, only to get a second chance. It’s a cinematic masterpiece, and I’m not the only one who believes it would still make an incredible movie.
One of the narrative’s central plot points involves a tomb-robbing scheme, something the protagonist considers totally insane.
Which brings us to this essay’s essence: Last Wednesday, in the wee hours of the morning, my parents’ gravesite was vandalized.
Let that sink in for a moment.
This is what I wrote to my brother and sister, alerting them:
Just wanted to let you know that Mom and Dad’s gravesite has been desecrated, the headstone knocked over and detached from its base. I discovered the damage Friday morning when I stopped in for a Father’s Day visit.
At first, I thought it was only our parents’ resting place that had been vandalized but soon realized that dozens more had been similarly attacked. Can’t even tell you how angry I felt, how saddened, how violated.
I stopped at the superintendent’s office to report the crime, and he informed me that approximately 135 gravesites had been disturbed, but that it was possible that even more had yet to be discovered. He said that the police were conducting an investigation and advised (asked, actually) that I do nothing for a week, allowing them to work the problem. He emphasized NOT to get some friends to join me and attempt to move the headstone myself, said it will take a crane to lift it. I asked about who bears financial liability for restoring the site to its former condition and he suggested patience. This could mean it’s going to fall on our family. I’m not sure …
Just wanted to share the news. It’s not been the best of days, but I’m optimistic that things will get better.
Again, let that sink in for a moment.
In a small town, you tend not to be suspicious of people harboring bad intent, especially if you went to school there, made lifelong friends there, played ball there, fell in love there, got your heart broken there, got your first job there and moved away from there.
In all the years I spent in North Carolina, I never once worried about the cemetery plot in which Mom and Dad had been buried.
It never occurred to me that one day violence would come to that sacred space, that strangers would inflict that kind of damage, that something as important as a final resting place would be fouled.
Somewhere out there, in my little town, there are villains who should be horsewhipped, spat upon, locked up and left to rot.
What kind of wretched miscreant would gather a bunch of like-minded punks and go on that sort of crime spree, safe under the cover of the night, knowing there are no cameras, no security, just acre upon acre of people laid to rest by those who loved them?
I can’t even imagine showing them an ounce of compassion, a modicum of mercy, anything close to empathy or understanding.
This was no schoolboy prank, some sort of adolescent high jinks gone off the rails. No, this was a malevolent campaign of destruction, plotted and planned, executed only to hurt innocents.
Let that sink in for a moment.
When I drove through the cemetery gates last Friday morning, I’d been remembering the tornado that touched down in my little town in spring 2000. Though the twister did considerable damage to the downtown area, it had saved its worst for the cemetery.
Dozens of century-old trees had been uprooted and felled, blocking narrow roadways and in some cases damaging gravesites and monuments, shattering pots of flowers, and scattering flags that had marked the plots of veterans. It would take years for it to heal.
But that was different. That was nature on a rampage, an occurrence no one wanted but understood as part of life.
What happened last week is beyond understanding or comprehension. It defies rational explanation, belonging to that subset of hideous human behavior that demands swift justice.
My parents are buried there … my mother and my father.
Their rest should never have been disturbed by cruel vandals.
Mike Dewey can be reached at Carolinamiked@aol.com or 1317 Troy Road, Ashland, OH 44805. He invites you to join him on his Facebook page.