What does this mean, why is it important? "Eating is a small, good thing in a time like this.”

In "A Small, Good Thing" by minimalist Raymond Carver is a
story with a message of sympathy and forgiveness and the cited line is pivotal to this
lesson.

Not knowing that Ann and Howard Weiss have been at
the hospital for the last three days, a baker phones them repeatedly to inform them that
they have not picked up the birthday cake which they have ordered.  After the third day,
their son, having been struck by a car, has died and the grief-stricken parents return
home.  When the phone rings again, they think it is the man who has struck their son
calling anonymously; later, however, Ann realizes it is the baker calling about the cake
that they have failed to pick up.  Incensed, Ann calls the baker names and they drive to
the shopping center to confront him.

When they reach the
bakery, it is closed, but they go around the the back and knock when they hear a radio. 
The baker opens the door, saying he is closed and asks, "What do you want at this
hour?....Are you drunk or something?"   Ann walks into the bakery, anyway.  She tells
her husband, "...this is the man who's been calling
us.

She
clenched her fists.  She stared at him fiercely.  There was a deep burning inside her,
an anger that made her feel larger than herself, larger than either of these
men.

The baker tells her he
does not want to argue with her, and she can have her cake for half price.  When she
does not reply, he tells her she can have the cake for free.  Ann continues her
hostility; the baker looks at Howard and says, "Careful, careful."  When Ann breaks down
and cries, Howard utters, "Shame" to the baker.  But, when Ann cries that her son for
whom they ordered the cake is dead, the baker throws off his apron and clears the
table.  He asks them to sit down on the chairs that he pulls
out.

"Let me say how sorry I am," the baker tells the
Weisses.  "I'm just a baker....Maybe once, maybe years ago, I was a different kind of
human being.  I've forgotten...But I'm deeply sorry...for your son, and sorry for my
part in this."  He tells Ann and Howard that he has no children. He explains that after
all the years of making cakes for others when he has no one has rendered him an odd man
who does not know how to act.

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You probably need to eat something," the baker
said. "I hope you'll eat some of my hot rolls.  You have to eat and keep going. 
Eating is a small, good thing in a time like this," he
said.

Ann and Howard eat his
warm cinnamon rolls that have just come from the oven.  The baker watches them and
encourages them to eat more as the act of eating together involves sharing.  Then the
baker speaks of his own loneliness, telling them what it has been like to be childless
all these years.  When his bread is baked, they all share the warm bread.  Ann and
Howard stay until the morning as they have broken bread with this lonely man with whom
they share childlessness.  They forgive him.