For so long after 9/11, we gazed southward and the sky was empty where the original Trade Center once stood. I used to think there should be some vast chalk outline in the sky, showing where the twin towers had been, like the silhouette TV detectives draw of the spot where the murder victim fell.

These days, when I walk across my Manhattan intersection and look down Seventh Avenue, I can see One World Trade Center going up. As you’ve seen during the coverage of this week’s 10th anniversary, they’ve reached 80-plus stories; its glass sheathing rises part of the way to the top, construction lights twinkle at night on the unfinished floors above.

Eventually, the structure will be 108 stories with an illuminated mast that will lift it to a height of, yes, 1,776 feet, but along the way they’ve abandoned the title Freedom Tower for fear of scaring away renters and provoking terrorists. I think of the 10 years that have passed, remember other 9/11 anniversaries and wonder what else has been abandoned as well.

On the first anniversary, I made the rounds: the tributes at ground zero, then a memorial service at the Episcopalian Church of St. Luke in the Fields on Hudson Street, where the weeping of victims’ families and friends pierced the heart. I attended a ceremony in Washington Square for the flight crews; doves were released for each of their lost lives.

The second year I was working and didn’t plan a visit, but as a friend from out of town and I sat on my roof that night, staring downtown at the twin shafts of light that shine each year in tribute, he asked if we could go. We strolled around the banks of searchlights that created the two bright columns pointing into the sky and as we walked, a woman ran by, smudging the site with burning sage, trying to cleanse it of the evil that had happened there.

The next three years, I went to ground zero or attended other memorials, but on the fifth anniversary, when I arrived downtown the scene seemed, sadly, more circus-like. The families of the victims were largely protected from it but those of us just outside were subjected to pitchmen and hangers-on, a man dressed in a bird suit urging passersby to “Have a Kind Day,” and everywhere, the “truthers” in their black T-shirts, thrusting in your face brochures and DVDs pitching every sinister conspiracy they believe caused the towers to fall, except, of course, the one that actually brought them down.

Last year, on a train home from Boston, where the two flights that hit the towers originated, I watched the Tribute in Light from a distance, its shafts of illumination piercing the dark above the faraway Manhattan skyline. And this year I stayed at home and watched on television as the official memorial was opened, songs were sung and the 2,750 names were read aloud once again.

I did go down to ground zero on Wednesday, walking through the rain and mist to Church and Vesey Streets, the intersection at which One World Trade Center is rising. The majority of the sidewalk traffic seemed equally divided among groups of businesspeople, construction workers and tourists. I stopped by St. Paul’s Chapel, where 10 years ago first responders and other emergency personnel slept, exhausted, in the church’s pews between hours of recovery work on the smoldering mountain of death and debris. The wooden pews are gone now, stored — just temporarily, I hope — and replaced with folding chairs where visitors come to view mementos of 9/11, and listen to choirs and chamber music.

Instead of the tributes of flowers and stuffed animals that once crowded St. Paul’s iron fence, now white ribbons were tied, each marked “Remember to Love.” Anyone could add a message to them — in black ink, slightly running from the damp, people had written “RIP to All,” “Peace,” “Keep on rocking in the free world,” or just their names.

I had come downtown for a discussion at the New York County Lawyer’s Association, sponsored with the New York Neighbors for American Values. Its subject was “9/11: Refuting Stereotypes and Challenging the Common Wisdom.” Eight panelists and moderator Tom Robbins discussed whether the public had been sufficiently involved in the plans for rebuilding lower Manhattan post-9/11 (no), if officials had recklessly downplayed the health hazards around the site (yes), if the mainstream media adequately reported those dangers (no) and whether post-attack security concerns had escalated intolerance and violated civil liberties (oh yes, indeed). In fact, a new Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board originally called for by the 9/11 commission report in 2004, its powers even strengthened by Congress in 2007, has yet to meet.

We seem to have squandered the solidarity and goodwill among ourselves that briefly blossomed after the tragic events of 9/11 — not to mention global support — just as unthinkingly as we’ve spent $1.2 trillion, according to the National Priorities Project (a nonpartisan, progressive think tank), on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq — money that could have generated thousands of college scholarships; hired firefighters, police officers and teachers; provided low cost healthcare for millions.

The renewed patriotism and commitment we felt a decade ago has decayed, sullied by jingoism, xenophobia and paranoid fantasies about race and religion. At the panel, Linda Sarsour of the Arab American Association of New York observed, “What stops another 9/11 is not profiling, but all New Yorkers becoming partners and friends.” We actually had that for a while in those first days and weeks of smoke and ash, those days when the smell of vaporized metal and electrical cable and God knows what else filled our air; so pungent you could taste it.

We lived through those days, and in a decade of memorials we still see flashes of the unity, strength and dedication so necessary for democracy to survive. But how horrible if the ultimate memorial to 9/11 is not waterfalls and names engraved on bronze or marble but the financial, moral and societal bankruptcy Osama bin Laden and 19 followers armed with box cutters hoped would be our fate.