Is The Things They Carried a Coping Mechanism?

In The Things They Carried, O'Brien talks about the way the soldiers dealt with death in Vietnam. They developed numerous euphemisms in order to avoid the word, and skirted around the subject as much as possible. Once a man had died, they would tell stories and jokes about him, as if he were still around, in order to "keep him alive." Based on this explanation, it is possible that O'Brien has not gotten over the way they coped with death in the war. He, in writing this book, is continuing to tell stories about the men who died, still keeping them alive. While the characters he uses are fictional, they are likely based on characteristics and actions of the men he served with, and therefore representative of them. O'Brien is able to recognize that he was unable to accept the soldiers' death in his book, but he may still be unable to achieve complete acceptance.