I didn't feel like I had a right to be there. It wasn't my disaster, it wasn't my tragedy. This massive loss of life, this memorial, belonged to the souls who lost their lives and the people who loved them.

It's been six months since the World Trade Center fell in a firey heap of metal, smoke and dust. Six months since thousands of people were crushed beneath the collapse. Six months since two terrorist-navigated planes created craters in the center of lower Manhattan.

The World Trade Center site is sterilized now. Behind police tape and orange work vehicles, it looks like a construction zone rather than the site of a major national tragedy. Only the blown-out windows of surrounding buildings and the American flag hanging above the cleanup effort give evidence that it's not a renovation project.

Since New York City opened the observation deck on Fulton Street in lower Manhattan, thousands from around the world have flocked to see the disaster site. They've left their marks everywhere on the observation deck — signatures on the walkways and railings, posters and pictures of lost loved ones and flowers still brought daily to the deck's gates.

I imagine they come to see this tragedy, to try and understand in real life the scenes that played themselves out on the network news like a horror movie. I imagine, from the multitude of American flags flying all over lower Manhattan, they came to celebrate their country, to come together, to vow to never let anything break us apart as a nation.

Standing elevated above the tragedy, looking down into the two gaping craters, I knew there were still souls underneath that heap that I couldn't see. People whose families were waiting for their loved ones to be discovered by hardhats so they could have the emotional relief of a tangible piece of death.

Around me, the 250 people allowed on the viewing deck with my group were silent. I was relieved they were at least respectful, relieved they realized this wasn't a tourist attraction. But breaking the silence was the constant click of snapshot cameras, freezing in time the cleanup effort of the greatest tragedy to ever strike American soil.

I know it is history. I know it is part of a healing process for the country to see it, to witness it, to understand it. I felt wrong, though, as the cameras snapped pictures of this crater. I felt odd, thinking that here, in a sterilized war zone, people were snapping vacation snapshots.

I looked down onto the balcony, and began reading the hundreds of signatures inked into the wood. My throat swelled and my eyes watered. "Cousin, we will raise your children as you would have," one read in black ink dated 2/18/02.

Only five days earlier.

I wondered what that person would have thought about the people snapping pictures of where that cousin died. Wondered if that person felt violated, or like the cousin's death was now a spectacle, on display. I wondered what I would feel like if I stood there, on the site where someone in my family had died, and people took pictures of it.

I left the walkway after reading that. I didn't sign the railing, and I didn't sign a guestbook. I wasn't sure I wanted to leave a piece of me here. But as I walked away, I knew that I would carry this vision with me for the rest of my life, and that while I didn't stay there, the vision of this disaster site would always stay with me.

• Empty craters full of pain