Dear Those Whose Names Have Become All Too Familiar,
I am sorry. I feel as though I should not have feelings about this because we were not friends. Friendly, yes, but not friends. It feels inappropriate for me to have cried for an hour after I got home from work. It feels inappropriate for me to begin crying again as I am sitting here. But I process the events around me with words I put down on the page, and you have become a very large part of that world.
You sat across the room from me in Latin last year. In all honesty, I was envious of the majority of your wardrobe. We didn't talk much, but that was okay. It was a large classroom, and we were supposed to be paying attention. You had your own friends there, and so did I.
I saw you at every Halloween and holiday party when I was younger. I heard you were supposed to be doing some of the same things as I was, and I was excited to reconnect. You seemed like you had gotten to be a pretty nice person.
I never really knew you, but I know your family. Your older sister was in on of my art classes last year. We used to sit across the table and talk about her boyfriend. I saw you in the hallway, and knew who you were.
I don't think I ever met you, or you. I'm sure I would have recognized your face in the hallway, and I'm sure you were wonderful people. 
In all honesty, I'm shaking again. A good friend of mine was on that highway just thirty minutes earlier. I can only imagine...
I don't want to. I heard the news while I was at work- we were standing in the middle of a barn, setting up a wedding, of all things, when an event planner (I think she did the previous wedding in that location and had stuck around to send off the wedding party and say hello to my boss) heard some knews and burst into tears. I didn't know much, though we did manage to figure out that one of her employees had been killed. I didn't connect the dots between that and the worried text a friend of mine had sent out earlier just to make sure that we were okay, that we weren't one of the five. We weren't. We could have been.
There isn't exactly any train of thought in this letter anymore.
I remember when that same friend sent out the list of names. I was in my coworker's car on that wedding's parking lot. I knew you. This was no longer a tragic event that I could store in the back of my mind until it was replaced by something fresher. This had become personal, despite my distance from you.
I leave out your names on this letter because they do not need to be shared more than they already have been. It is easy enough to find them- every second post on Facebook includes them. I assume you would appreciate it if I would end this now. I could go on, but my brain is full of those snowball fights when the television runs out of VHS to play. I don't have a conclusion, other than to simply end it.
I am so sorry.