Ironic?

“A Small Good Thing” by Raymond Carver, explores the pain and anxiety that a family goes through who has a family member ill or in the hospital. This tragedy brings the mother and father closer together, but it is also an ironic case of the death of innocence. Scotty was a happy little boy who was supposed to be having fun at his birthday party, not laying unconscious at a hospital fighting for his life. At the end when he dies it made me wonder why the title of the story was “A Small Good Thing”? There was nothing about the story that seemed good, the young boy died, this seemed very strange and ironic. The story also started and ended on the bakery, in the beginning the mother was excited and ordering her son a birthday cake, unaware of the events that were about to take place. Then at the end the mother and father were at the bakery eating cinnamon rolls and seemed to be coming to grips with the past events and hardships that they had gone through. Through this rough time the parents come closer together as they are both losing the most important thing in their lives, which is their son. And at the end we see hope of them moving on and getting their lives back together.