When she wants to feel closer to her son, Lori Brown looks out the window at the elementary school where she teaches. In the distance, there is a tree planted in his honor.
"The tree makes me happy," she says. "The tree represents life to me."
Or she visits Graham High School, where there is a memorial to him in the theater department and a bench out of his honor.
PHOTOS: Harrison Brown, victim in deadly UT stabbing
"Every time I see his name, 'In memory of Harrison Brown' it really, you know, makes it real," Lori says.
Nine months ago, her son, 19-year-old Harrison Brown, was fatally stabbed at the University of Texas as he was completing his freshman year.
The music major was one of four students who police say were randomly attacked by fellow student Kendrex White, who remains in the Travis County Jail, on May 1.
The other three students who were stabbed survived.
Five weeks later, Lori Brown's husband of nearly 30 years died from ALS.
"I can't lie," she says. "There are times when I don't want to get out of bed. I have good days and I have bad days. I have good moments, and I have bad moments."
Already preparing to say goodbye to her husband of nearly 30 years, Lori, 55, recalls her last conversation with her younger of two sons.
She was alone in her classroom at Woodland Elementary in the North Texas town west of Fort Worth when he called to say that he had just finished working out at Gregory Gym and was on his way to get lunch. He had a 2 p.m. class.
Minutes later, her phone rang again. The voice on the other end wasn't her son but was instead a woman.
"She said 'Are you Harrison's mom?' and I knew immediately my heart fell to the floor, that this was not going to be a good phone call," she recalled.
The woman told her that Harrison had been stabbed and was bleeding.
Lori ran down the hallway and soon rushed home to tell her husband, who had lost the ability to speak, that their son was badly hurt.
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A family in Graham owns a private plane and offered to fly her to Austin.
"I was like how can this be happening," she remembers thinking to herself. "This can't be happening. Harrison has to be OK. I can't do this."
She arrived in Austin to find out her son did not survive.
In October 2015, doctors had diagnosed Kurt Brown with ALS. They gave him two years to live, five max.
Over the next few months together -- Lori Brown did her best to keep the family together.
The four of them, including Harrison's older brother John, traveled to Austin to help move Harrison into his dorm.
Over two semesters, the two developed a routine in which he called her each afternoon to check in, as he had done the day he died.
Over the next few weeks after her son's death, Lori's husband continued to worsen.
On June 5, hospice nurses told her that he likely wouldn't make it through the day.
"Through the whole thing my husband and I had this thing where we would hold hands and squeeze, 'I love you,'" she said. "Through the whole thing, I would do that and he would do it back to me, and I could feel his strength getting weaker and weaker and weaker right up until the very end."
The past few months, Lori Brown has tried to make it the best way she can.
She's moved into a new home -- and has gone back to work.
She finds comfort with other mothers in her small town who have a sense of her pain.
"There is a handful of people, here in Graham, who have lost a child, and it's pretty shocking," she said. "So we are almost like a club. You don't want to be part of that club."
When she feels consumed by tragedy and loss, Lori said she thinks about what her husband and son would want for her.
"I know they are together," she said. "I feel like Kurt and Harrison would want me to move forward and be happy and live life."
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