No Taps for Ty

 Ah, but you who philosophize
disgrace and criticize all fears
Bury the rag deep in your face
For now's the time for your tears 
--The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carol, 
Bob Dylan 

He died drunk early one mornin' 
Alone in the land he fought to save 
Two inches of water in a lonely ditch 
Was a grave for Ira Hayes 
--Ira Hayes, Johnny Cash 

___________________

Our obituary for 2012 will be in the form of a requiem for a newly dead former Marine, Ty Ziegel.

Writing newspaper obits, one quickly comes to understand that all deaths are the same.  "He worked for ___________; he was a member of __________ church and union; he is survived by ____________."  Were this a standard obituary, that would do, but we are going to remember Ty Ziegel, the profoundly combat disfigured Marine about whom we wrote four years ago.

Ty died 26 Dec 2012, almost eight years to the day after he was wounded while on a routine patrol during his 2nd Iraq tour, when a suicide bomber blew up near his truck. Ziegel underwent 50 operations and a 19-month recovery. 

The grotesquely disfigured Ziegel was feted by the press for his soon-to-be failed marriage to his high school sweetheart; photographer Nina Berman won the World Press Photo competition for portraiture in 2006 for her series on Ziegel.  "Love overcomes all" was the hopeful theme.

Ziegel died after Christmas in Metamora, Illinois, after falling on ice outside of a bar.  Cause of death has not been declared, though one of two small online newspaper notices mentioned the autopsy showed that he had an enlarged heart.  In a perfunctory 12.28.12 news story in a Central Illinois newspaper, his mother and father are quoted:

"He said, 'I look like an alien,' and I said, 'Well, yeah, you kind of do.  You know?' said mom Becky [sic] "But he still had his dimples; he still had that twinkle in his eye."

"It didn't bother him, the grocery list of injuries he had," added his father Jeffrey Ziegel.  It didn't phase him a bit." [sic]

The embedded video link in the story is broken; Tyler Ziegel's Wikipedia page has been taken down.

Ty's spirit probably began its dissolution a few years back, artificially propped up by the unbidden celebrity heaped upon him.  Oprah devoted a program to him and his bride when the fairy tale was the spin; now, almost a week out, no major news service has even noted his ignoble death.

There are those who will say, "He volunteered ... hard cheese, old boy.  Those are the breaks."  Harsh, and perhaps true.  To be sure, we are all here on borrowed time. But Ty was robbed of the vicissitudes of a life in the service of a questionable national goal.

For Ty Ziegel, we could say, proximal cause of death: cerebral hematoma.  Distal cause: Unjust discretionary war. 

Call him drunken Ira Hayes 

He won't answer anymore 

Not the whiskey drinkin'

Indian Nor the Marine that went to war