SIR: Most dictionaries define ‘valentine’ as someone you love or think is attractive or the card itself sent to her or him on St Valentine’s Day! A significant number of people worldwide, though without statistics to back this loose assertion, choose this day (February 14) to ‘express’ their love to others. The day has, however, become one that this writer remembers with mixed feelings for a long time now.

  As I put down these words, I opened a Bible bought in acknowledgement of God’s unmerited favour one eventful Valentine Day among His other uncountable acts of grace to me. At the back of its front cover, I had written the following in free verse:

A child screamed As one of the engines shut down With bangs rancorous and deafening.

Grave silence the people enveloped;

Anxiety, ADC plane filled,

As its nose up it lifted.

Making heavy weather of the altitude,

The aircraft, the great Deliverer’s hand had guided.

After an eternity, it seemed,

“We’re returning to MMA,

We’ve been bird-shot,” the pilot

His voice found.

Lagos-Abuja Flight at 7am

On time was.

Away from doom,

On the ground in safety, we were back

In about ten minutes. 

The Valentine Day 1995,

Never will I forget.O Lord, your name I magnify.

As we trooped out of the plane, firefighters were already positioned, confirming the fear of the passengers. Then I began to recognise faces of other lucky travellers among them intimate friends.  My thought had flashed to some of them who would render assistance to my family in my absence should the ultimate end come that morning.  They had been, unfortunately, also aboard the plane, unknown to me.  

  How I wish the passengers of the Dana Air plane that crashed on Sunday, June 3, 2012, had been as lucky as we were.  The nation is still mourning that monumental loss in human resources. The huge void created in many homes we pray the Heaven to fill with His amazing grace and comfort the bereaved.  Even without being directly related to any of the victims, I always have an awful pain running through my entire body whenever I remember the crash and imagine the last minute state of panic that would have sent them into the depths of despair. Heaven rest them.

  My thought of these passengers including those of the twin Malaysian Airlines disasters and of the inhumanly-downed passenger plane in Ukraine in 2014 has revived my trauma of twenty years ago. 

  For me, from the bottom of my heart, I am immensely grateful to my Creator for preserving my life and extending my coast in every field honorable. I wish to propose that on each St Valentine’s Day we all take some five minutes to remember the unfortunate souls that we can no longer send valentine cards as we had done hitherto. For uniformity, we may make it a standing global policy of Remembrance Time: 12pm to 12:05pm local time. Let us begin in earnest.

  Our valentines of yesteryear should not be forgotten, though “… all our yesterdays have lighted fools/ the way to dusty death…”

• Folorunso Folowosele,

Lagos.