The user's final edit was to blank his Talk page with the edit summary "fuck it."  The page blanking was reverted "because of an active block".  The block is no longer active, the user has not returned to Wikipedia, and I think it is pretty clear that "fuck it" is the equivalent of "I am retiring from Wikipedia."  It seems to me that if someone has expressed quite clearly that they don't want to come back to Wikipedia and that they don't want their sad saga displayed on their Talk page for all eternity, that is within their rights.
Also, I question whether the initial reversion of the page blanking was even according to policy.  Show me one policy that says you cannot blank active block messages on your talk page, hmmm?  While WP:DRC is merely a guideline, there is a distinct lack of Wikipedia policy limiting what kind of content users can remove from their Talk page.  I happen to think there should be policy limiting what a person is allowed to remove from their own talk page (e.g. warnings <24 hours old and active block notices) but as it currently stands there is no such policy, at least not that I can find.  (If I am wrong, please enlighten me!)
If I have to abide by rules I think are dumb, then so does everybody else.  In fact, that is the difference between us and Karaku  Karaku disagreed with the rules so he chose to aggressively break them and call everyone else ignorant.  I disagree with the rules, but I realize they have been formed by community consensus and so I will abide by them as long as they are in place.  And by my interpretation of the current rules, Karaku's blanking of the Talk page should never have been reverted.  
Furthermore, while I recognize that I was using the word "VANISH" imprecisely, it appears to be a longstanding tradition in Wikipedia that if a user wants to just leave and clear out the ugly history of their wrongdoing, they have the right to do that.  Karaku very clearly indicated a desire to do just that (is there really that much difference between putting a banner saying "Retired" at the top of your Talk page vs. blanking the thing with the edit summary "fuck it"?).
Anyway, I'm obviously not going to get in an edit war over a retired user's talk page.  I'm just sort of surprised at the insistence to leave all this stuff in place when the user doesn't want it and Wikipedia policy provides no mechanism to override those wishes...