My wife is (temporarily) insane. She staggered across the line of sanity perhaps 6 months ago. It was a little hard for me to discern because I’m also swinging back and forth across the imaginary line of mental illness. However I started to notice some strange behaviors.

First, she began collecting boxes. There is always a rational reason to begin with. We are trying to sell our house and will need boxes to move stuff. The boxes, in their flattened state, are now the main quantity that we will have to move. They are everywhere and she’s still looking for more. Our house, otherwise, is virtually empty. Most of it is in boxes in a storage facility. We may eventually become a real live box store.

She also is quietly selling virtually anything she feels has a buyer. Surprisingly, there are a lot of people out there that spend all day looking for weird stuff to buy. Thanks to Facebook, they find things.

Our doorbell continually rings. I don’t even react anymore because I know it’s not anything for me. It’s someone who just paid 5 or 10 dollars for a trinket of happiness. This can be very diverse: a game, a card, some wire, a brush, a picture, a wrench or some clothing. The value of the object can actually be somewhat objectively determined by an app on your phone. How the phone does this is obscure, however it seems to know what other folks think it’s worth. It’s all going to be worth it when we use the monies to buy more boxes.

Deanna, in her somewhat fragile state, loves to put things in containers. We have gone way beyond cardboard now. Costco has clear/opaque, large/small plastic containers and sometimes they go on sale. I know a lot more about the economics of container sales than I ever thought I would. Also we have purchased a lot of things we can use to carry these containers. This unfortunately cost a lot more than the actual containers.

We bought a truck that we, to date, have put $9000 extra towards fixing, just because it can carry really big boxes. We have also bought a trailer to add to our 2 other trailers because this one allows us to carry pretty much anything and once we’ve carried it we can tip it up and dump it out.

All of this is absolutely necessary. Kyle, my oldest son and his wife Avvai put almost everything they own in 1 backpack each. They wear the rest of their belongings. However, it takes them longer to find a corkscrew than it will take Deanna. We may have to drive 200 km however, to get to it.

So, since we are both now retired, Deanna had lots of time to put things in boxes. It has been pretty cold here recently but that didn’t slow her down. She metamorphosized into a 300 pound “Michelin Man” figure to organize her Dad’s shed. Apparently Henry, we are discovering, never threw anything out. He knew that his daughter would actually appreciate this and rise to the challenge of putting everything in a box.

So, that is where I found her recently, happily surrounded by a myriad of colorful containers, all labelled and filling up with stuff. I’m not much help with these projects because I’m still somewhat sane. I also do not have the sorting instinct. It took me years to sort my socks and because of that, I just kept buying more socks. I admit, I am a failure in this critical area of life. Also it is too cold out there for me so I usually just revert to carrying boxes from one place to another. This task is satisfying and often I think of my friend Sisyphus, when I do this.

When it gets too cold, Deanna turns her attention to inside the house. This house also needs to be sold sometimes as well. It is an even bigger challenge than ours because Deanna’s Mom still lives there and doesn’t want to leave. Despite this minor inconvenience, Deanna creatively continues to put everything in boxes.

Sharron, unfortunately, is very disabled. She has COPD, congestive heart disease, a huge hiatus hernia and finally severe kyphosis where she can not straighten out. She is pretty with it mentally but even that has been put into question at times.

Fentanyl, for all its bad press, has enabled her to function amazingly well. She still cannot negotiate stairs and can just barely get in and out of bed unassisted. However, with some daytime help she is quite happy staying in her house- apparently forever.

Deanna, as I said, can still work downstairs almost unlimited as Sharron can’t get down there to prevent her from packing or- heaven forbid- throwing things out. According to Sharron, she will need lawn darts and cross country skis in the near future. Apparently, she and Henry stated in their wedding vows to love and cherish each other and to NEVER throw anything away.

The other day Sharron asked if we thought that she could still drive. These are the questions that make you pause. Really? First of all, you must actually get to the vehicle which is almost impossible and then, even less likely, you must enter the vehicle. If God, in his mercy, somehow miraculously enables this, you then have to keep the car on the road, avoid other vehicles and be able to reach the driving controls. Once this is somehow accomplished you have to get out of the car. Probably the hardest task of all. So…. no, you probably can’t drive.

She nodded and took that as a maybe, depending on God’s mood that day.

So Sharron is partially responsible for pushing Deanna slightly further over the hazy line of reality. However, her strongest link to sanity is her very clear purpose-find and fill as many boxes as possible, as soon as possible. Also label everything. This is critical and once again she excels and I don’t.

When I first met Deanna, she had heard that I had worked in a Cambodian refugee camp briefly. This was back in the late 80’s after the Khmer Rouge overran Cambodia and killed millions. I had the opportunity to do some dental education and of course, took some pictures. That’s what Deanna wanted to see. Pictures. This was her dream as a newly graduated nurse- to do exactly what I had attempted to do. She soon discovered one of my weaknesses. I took poor pictures, if any, and those I took were thrown into boxes, not labelled and were totally unorganized. However, even with this almost fatal disclosure, she married me. I think it was the first of a series of miracles I have experienced.

So, for now, every day is boxing day. I will continue to carry the seemingly endless, but well labelled wall of boxes to their appropriate place in the universe. My hope now is to actually start to enjoy increasing the entropy in the world by emptying these boxes.

For now, I am very happy to help Deanna. And, as I am driving to deliver another load of containers, I hope to avoid encountering a white Ford with a little old lady peering over the wheel wobbling slightly over the white line. However, if I do, I’m sure there is an appropriate box with my name neatly laminated on top. Just waiting for me.

— Ken Siemens, Boxes, 2025