Hoarders in the Family

As Fiorella's hands set rocks around the driveway, her brain was busy trying to piece together the psychology of her late sister-in-law.  In her later years, BJ became a classic hoarder.  Narrow paths wound their ways between the piles of treasures in her architect-designed home on a prestigious street in an exclusive Austin zip code.

Maybe BJ's hoarding was because her parents had died on her, one of her sons had been killed, and another had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. But BJ had a third son who was very much alive and sane.  And two grandsons to boot.

Maybe the  hoarding was a genetic thing--BJ's aunt had been a hoarder.  Maybe hoarding had once been a survival mechanism for the human race.

Fiorella didn't draw any conclusions about BJ, but at least a lot of rocks got put in place.

Mental Health Issues

Motive, schmotive. Loughner is crazy. Probably paranoid schizophrenia, which often develops in early adulthood. Fio knows. One of her nephews is paranoid schizophrenic. She's written about him before. He's the one to whom cats and mailboxes talk, to whom radios and TVs broadcast warnings that the police are after him, whose knees the Ku Klux Klan has damaged by sending electronic rays through the wall of his ratty apartment because he talked to a Black person.

He's the one who tried to kill his mother.

But he's still running around loose, on his own, and he doesn't take any medication. After all, this is a democracy, and he's entitled to make his own decisions regarding medical treatment. Except that's exactly what his affliction prevents him from doing, making his own decisions--at least rational ones. It's like requiring a blind person to see.

Like expecting Jared Loughner to realize the inhumanity of his actions.