The ironic actress
After having received attention professionally, the actress in "Willing" demonstrates an ironic inability to pay any attention to other people. When she realizes that she's lived without love, she doesn't even consider real intimacy. She just uses some stranger and then blames him when he leaves.
The ironic teacher and student
If dance represents hope and joy, then the boy with Cystic Fibrosis ought to feel hopeless and sad because of his disability. Ironically, the teacher cannot see hope or joy outside the context of dance, so she sets herself on the task of teaching the boy to dance. It's very ironic, so much so that it's almost hard to parse. Maybe it's a metaphor for life with depression. In "Beautiful Grade," the same relationship comes up. The story teller is expressing dysfunction.
The dying baby in "People Like That"
Children represent potential and new life. They represent the generation of human life, so to see a baby dying is ironic and tragic. The cancer becomes a symbol for the cruelty of fate.
The Peed Onk community
In the same story, one might expect a sad, lonely hospital where children go who have cancer, but what the young couple learns about life is way different than they expected. They learned about unrelenting hope and the never-ending support of the community of those who suffer alongside one another.
The "Terrific Mother"
When a friend urges the narrator to try her hand at child work, she lets the baby die. She never forgives herself. Her friend said she'd be a "Terrific Mother." The question of life and death is again on display because the story again deals with the fates of small children, which represent future potential and new life.
