“T.!” I said.

“Sweetie!” she  replied.

It was the same woman who got us into our last apartment building. She’s some kind of rep for the parent company. Very cool chick, very nice. It was good seeing her again, even if she chided me for not networking with her. Hey, I’ve been swamped for nine months…

On the second job of the day, I ended up moving the couple into an apartment I’d moved someone else into. Kind of a sad situation, though — the previous tenants broke up and I was supposed to move him to a new place. We couldn’t get our schedules to sync up, though, so he kind of drifted away.

This is beginning to happen a lot now. Not only can I tell you what the loading docks are like for 99 percent of the city’s buildings, I know who lives in half of them. Is this success? Maybe. The U.S. Census Bureau ought to talk to me.

I remember the interview I had with her. I was sure I had no chance — the Times was A BIG D.C. PAPER, and I only had a couple of clips under my belt from an internship a few months before. Looking back on them now, they all sucked, but they were all I had. In the end, she hired me in part because — I’m sure of this — she said I reminded her of her son.

I later met her son. He’s a Captain in the Army, I believe, and an usher at our church. Solid guy. I learned that her observation was a great compliment.

Mary Lou was easy to work for. Maybe too easy. But she knew the news business inside and out, and I learned a ton from her. And whenever I forced myself to go to some journalistic event, I would always check the table of name tags for hers even long after I’d left the Times. The last time was just a couple of months ago. My wife is a Philips Foundation fellow, and we went to the Press Club for the latest Philips Foundation fellowship winners’ dinner. Grace, Mary Lou and I spent a lot of time together (as far as a “lot of time” goes at these things). I got her a glass of wine. We had some laughs. It was a real pleasure to spend time with such a gracious, wonderful woman.

I wish I’d known that was going to be the last time I ever saw her.

But I think what I’ll remember about her the most is seeing her red hair on the left side of the aisle at St. Mary’s. We used to sit up in the choir loft (little Joe is a handful sometimes), and when my attention would wander, I’d look for Mary Lou. More often than not, there she’d be. And now, she’s looking down from somewhere above on us.