'Do you not see the heart in the stars?' (Lighting Candles for the Missing).

• Author: Cahill, Kevin M.

Many of the victims of the terrorist attacks of 11 September were young people, often at the beginning of their professional lives, as indeed were many firemen and rescue workers who lost their lives when the World Trade Center towers collapsed. Around the world, people, trying to make sense of the tragedy, experienced the days and weeks following the attacks with "grief approaching despair and overwhelming, abiding hope". In many places around New York spontaneous memorials telling the victims' stories help those left behind find ways to cope with the senseless violence.

The UN Chronicle presents in the following pages, three perspectives of such memorials for the missing. At a recent memorial service at New York's Pace University, which is located near "Ground Zero" and had lost several of its students, Kevin Cahill shared his own personal experiences of humanitarian tragedies in other parts of the world. The service ended with the lighting of candles. Lawri Moore, President of the United Nations Jazz Society, shares her conversations with many jazz musicians in New York about coping with the tragedy. Finally, we include a silent tribute to one of the many young New York City firefighters lost in the rubble, Jonathan Ielpi, 29, first assistant chief of the volunteer Vigilant Fire Department in Great Neck, New York.

It is a privilege to be asked to share in this memorial service at Pace University, but also, and just as important, to be present at your time of renewal. These emotions--grief approaching despair, and overwhelming, abiding hope--are not contradictory or mutually exclusive. Particularly for the young, hope for a better future, contradictory or mutually, is a fundamental part of your being. It is why you study at a university. To learn, to expand your minds, so that you can contribute to others and maybe, just maybe, make a more sane world for your children and their children.

Today, it is both your solidarity with the dead and the injured, combined with your determination and commitment to begin a new era, that offer the finest tribute to the memory of those we honour. To you who have lost loved ones, and to you who are physically or mentally scarred by this trauma, do not be afraid, do not underestimate your capacity to heal and to grow, for you can, and you simply must go on, and we all must learn from this disaster.

My own perspective on tragedy is somewhat unusual. Every day most physicians deal with human tragedy, for...