By Cliff Potts

It wasn’t much of a street, Hausden Court — just a short cut off Milwaukee near Belmont. The kind of block you’d drive past without noticing, unless you lived there. I did. My mom and dad did too. That winter, it was the last place we’d all live under one roof.

I’d moved back because my mom asked me to. Dad was dying of leukemia, and she needed help. I was working nights for Wells Fargo Guard Services at the Jewel Foods warehouse, wearing a uniform that smelled like concrete dust and diesel. I wasn’t married yet. I was a disappointed Christian trying to figure out what God thought He was teaching me. Whatever it was, I wasn’t learning it.

Our apartment was old Chicago through and through: a king bedroom, a dining room, the front room — the frunchroom, as people say — and a sunroom that opened onto a two-story porch. Steam heat hissed from the radiators like a restless ghost. The back porch was enclosed, and we had a storage pen in the basement that always smelled like metal and mildew. It was cramped, tired, and somehow still alive.

Dad had started giving away his tools before we knew how little time was left. He gave them to George, my brother-in-law, before George and my sister divorced. Funny how that worked out — all three of us ended up divorced in the end. Maybe America just sets the bar too damn high for what “happy” is supposed to look like.

He’d goad me about everything back then — my walk, my job, my faith, my tone. Said it would make me tougher. I think he just wanted to make sure I’d survive him. Sometimes, I was the only one who could understand him anymore. We’d go for walks when he had the strength, and he’d yell at me for walking too fast. It was absurd, sad, and weirdly comforting all at once.

I came home from the warehouse one morning, checked on him, and went to bed. He died a few hours later. No drama, no moment of revelation — just the quiet passing of someone who’d always been there. The cop who came to help take his body to the morgue — part of the routine for terminal cases — was a big man with hair plugs. He hugged my mom. I’ll never forget that. For a few seconds, the whole city seemed to hold its breath.

Afterward, everything felt slightly out of tune. Surreal. I remember thinking about all the lessons Dad tried to teach me — most of them I only understood years too late. Life has a way of grading on a curve you can’t see.

I met Chrissy — or Mercy, or Cheseda, depending on which era of her life you caught her in — not long after, working at that same warehouse. We had a son, named after his grandfather. He was born in that apartment on Hausden Court, under the same roof where my father died.

Five months later, she said we should move to California. In 1987, we said goodbye to Chicago. Six years gone, but Chicago never really leaves you. The city has a way of burning itself into your bones — even the small streets no one remembers.

Sometimes, I still see that porch in my mind. The one on the right side of Hausden Court, looking away from Milwaukee. The light through the sunroom window. The steam pipes clanking like an old heartbeat. That was where I learned what strength really looked like — not from sermons, or jobs, or luck. But from the simple act of staying, and seeing someone through to the end.

🕯️ Another Chicago Story from The Dead Republic