funnily enough, if I remember correctly, having the totem be picked up automatically on respawn was a way to get you to not end up stuck in an endless death loop if you happened to drop it in a treacherous place, like, on top of spikes.
If you didn't pick it up it'd just keep respawning you on top of spikes, and while there was probably better solutions, the quickest one was to make it so you'd pick it up, so that two consecutive deaths would force a respawn to the beginning of the level.