ABSTRACT
In the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attacks on airline passengers and people in the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., we gasped in horror and tried to comprehend the magnitude of the events that surrounded this public tragedy. The surprise attack on our nation left most of us riding a roller coaster of emotions as we tried to comprehend the losses in the largest human-caused public disaster in this country since the attack on Pearl Harbor in World War II. Recently, almost a year after this tragedy, a hospice colleague posed a profound question to us: “How do we make meaning, make sense, out of what seems to be such a meaningless and senseless tragedy?” Initially we were silenced by such a question. Now we are ready to grapple with it, not to give pat answers to the age-old question of evil in the world, but to understand how humans make meaning in the wake of public tragedy.
