Tim O’Brien’s Advice for Coping With Loss

If any singular event can alter the course of a life, it’s the death of someone held dear. Death has the power to hold people captive to their emotions for a lifetime of sadness, guilt, and long spells of depression. Coping with these emotions can be intense and maddening, often spitting a person right back to where they started. If extreme spells of depression and introspection don’t solve the problem, then how does one overcome the loss of a loved one? According to Tim O’Brien, and former rapper Samsa, the solution to “overcoming” loss is all about filling the void with storytelling.

Storytelling pervades The Things They Carried as the leading overtone to a seemingly doom and gloom story about death and loss. While Tim O’Brien may have intended for the fictional account to be depressing initially, his true intention shines through in the final chapter, when his key message shines and the reader finally gets the point of it all. In this chapter, aptly titled “The Lives of the Dead”, O’Brien reveals the identity of Linda, a girl he loved as a child taken by the clutches of cancer. O’Brien’s way of coping with the loss of Linda is to insert her into his fictional stories, essentially bringing her back to life, as the title implies. 

Similarly, In “Haunt Me”, Samsa describes a scenario in which someone close to him died, leaving a hole in his heart he had to fill. His desired way for the hole in his heart to be filled is through his loved one haunting him. He then goes on to describe various ways she could haunt him, including conventional ways like a ouija board. As the song progresses, Samsa’s ideas progress too, becoming more creative and unnatural. The song lightens up too—as Samsa’s creativity flows and his ideas become more personalized and less basic, he grows a seemingly stronger connection with his loved one. 

While these art forms may not seem similar, this is a real life example of O’Brien’s theory: Samsa, the artist, is spending his free time writing lyrics for someone who can’t be with him anymore. The only difference between Samsa and O’Brien are their individual ways of displaying creativity. Where O’Brien chooses to write books starring Kiowa or imagine stories with Linda, Samsa opts to write personal, nuanced lyrics about the person he so desperately needs back in his life. 

Dealing with loss is a near-impossible mission only accomplished by those who continue to better understand that which was lost. Instead of moping, these people follow the advice of Tim O’Brien, bettering their understanding of their loved ones by personalizing their connections. This newfound, strengthened connection allows people to pick themselves up and move on, because instead of choosing to leave that which was held so dear to them behind, they opt to take that person with them.