Splendour of the
setting sun
by Jilliana
Ranicar-Breese
I never
thought of retirement and getting old. It just
happened one day without warning. It crept up on
me when I didn’t expect it.
I was spending a few winter months in Chaniá,
Crete where I was part of the Friday evening
Jewish community. The service in the synagogue
was very familiar as the sounds took me back to
my teenage years in Liverpool where I grew up.
One morning I visited the synagogue and stepping
outside the entrance, my leg gave way and
collapsed. I fell on my back looking up at the
blue blue sky lost in religious wonderland.
People must have thought I’d had a heart
attack but no, I was brought to my feet by Nikos
Stavroulakis, the leader of the community, who
took me to my temporary home around the corner
and put me to bed.
After various phone calls a Turkish Iranian
masseur came round and manipulated my body and
legs with a special technique until the shooting
pain disappeared.
That time I was saved but the next time, at Greek
Easter, I wasn’t so lucky. I had collapsed
for the second time but this time I had a Russian
lady masseuse for a short while. It was then I
decided to go home to Brighton. I had a sciatic
nerve pressing on my spine and had to have
immediate surgery.
I had difficulty walking and felt I had aged
twenty years.
I had always looked and dressed twenty years
younger than I was. My ‘Sultana’ style
began in Crete where I bought bright flowing
Indian cotton dresses and eventually led to life
in Turkey wearing my signature turbans. Later in
Rhodes, on another journey, I would add fresh
colourful flowers in my hair.
My style was like painting in colours that made
me look and feel younger by twenty years with my
advancing years into the sunset.
Written
in Nightingale 20/11/24.
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