Callie Dean

In Short – Issue 2 (Winter 2025)

January 31, 2025

a photograph of a stuffed animal elephant on the ground with a turtle next to it with visual effects

Mouse the Elephant by KJ Hannah Greenberg

The Grief of Four-Year-Olds

By Callie Dean

My son crouches on the sidewalk beside a bustling anthill, watching a procession of worker ants disappear into tunnels as dark and unknowable as ancient catacombs. Earlier, in the car, he’d rattled off a litany of things that die. Cats die. Trees die. Even grass dies—you can tell because it turns brown.

“Yes, that’s true,” I’d agreed, matching his matter-of-fact tone. Mimi died. Now she is in a box underground.

En route to the cemetery, I fumbled my way through an impromptu explanation of interment. He listened, unperturbed, with only two follow-up questions: whether he could help shovel dirt onto Mimi’s casket, and whether the process would involve excavators or dump trucks.

Afterward, he opened his toy box and scattered wooden jungle animals across the rug.

“They’re having a funeral,” he explained.

Only then did I notice the giraffe lying in the center, encircled by a crowd of mourners: elephant, zebra, lion, and ostrich. Their bright colors and painted-on smiles struck me as absurdly ill-suited, if not indecent, for the occasion.

Now, stooping at the edge of the lawn, studying the ant mound, he wonders aloud whether they bury their dead. It will take years before I know how to respond, before I peer through the plastic walls of our ant farm and notice our tiny pets piling dirt atop their fallen compatriots. With a sudden burst of excitement, I will call my son over to watch with me.

But he, 10 years old by then and impossibly wise, will have long forgotten his question.

Callie Dean (she/her) is a program evaluator and community artist living in Shreveport, LA, with her husband and three sons. Her essays and poems have appeared or are forthcoming at Coffee + Crumbs, Unbroken, JMWW, Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, and elsewhere. She serves as an editorial assistant at Literary Mama and blogs for the STEM Tuesday team at From the Mixed-Up Files … of Middle Grade Authors. Her first picture book, Marvelous Mistakes: Accidents That Made History, will launch in 2026. Find her online at calliebdean.com.