The horror and darkness of Joyce Carol Oates's latest story

Joyce Carol Oatses's story in current New Yorker, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, is, at least at first, as dark and foreboding as anything she's written, which is saying something. This is a dystopian story in the not-too-distant future, focused on a 70-something couple living on the Hudson near Poughkipsee, at a time when every aspect of the earth is poisoned and polluted and when all four elements are in turmoil and rebellions against human habitation (firestorms, floods, soil poisoned with bacteria, polluted waters). The woman at the heart of the story, Luce, begins by reflecting on her (many!) friends who have recently died or received terrible diagnoses. I almost couldn't get past the first two pages. The story then focuses on the couple's decision to have a big party/gathering for all their friends with the highlight being the performance by Luce and others of a Schubert quartet. To my surprise, the performance comes off pretty well and the story ends with Luce feeling somewhat at peace. This ending is not what I expected from JCO - I thought there would be something dramatic or tragic during the course of the performance, in keeping w/ JCO's writing over her long career, writing that's full of death and violence and mishaps. Is she softening? Not really, because the world established in the piece is maybe a greater horror than any act of violence or natural disaster; human-made disaster is the worst, and her view that we're pretty much over the precipice is scariest of all. One thing I found strange in this story is that this gather of the retired and semi-retired and this close look at one couple includes virtually no mention of children or grandchildren, which I think is always a major topic among the 70+ set; is that a deliberate absence in this story, as if the next generation has been eliminated? Of is it just the strange focus of this gathering of (mostly) academics and artists?