THE COVID MONTHS | FOR PETER WITH LOVE …
The North Yorkshire moorland was at it’s best that June day. Lambs, grown enough to enjoy real mischief, played under a cloudless blue sky. The rolling landscape made endless billowing, blowsy pom poms of green as far as the eye could see, all of them dotted with the rich, deep yellow of the field buttercups. The farmer stood nearly six feet down in a large hole determinedly digging through the heavy, wet clay, his spade fighting to get past the stones. It had taken over twelve hours of hard labour and still it was not quite done. He was a friendly, courteous and informative man moving easily between his labour and the curious inquisitive questioning of the trickle of people starting to come into the field. A few hay bales were scattered against the wall behind him, offering seating for anyone without their own chair. A small row of assorted outdoor chairs made a wiggly front row on the uneven ground. People stood around in pairs and small groups talking in hushed tones and keeping a watchful eye.
The journey there had been a bit of a treasure hunt with instructions like ‘… It is easy to miss the field but it is located just after a small barn with a small tree and you are likely to see dustbins by the roadside.’ Peter’s family had come from Bornholm, the Danish Island in the Baltic Sea. Friends from the South mingled with those from nearby cities, towns and villages. Many colleagues from his early training days at Northern Guild were there, some had not met up for the best part of twenty- five years. We were all brought together by one man, a man whom we all loved and cherished in our own individual and unique ways. A man of enormous charisma, charm, humour and kindness. A bon vivant who loved good food, good wine and single malts. A gifted story teller and an exquisite classical guitar player. A man who loved words and wrote in a beautiful, flowing hand. A man of ideals who cared deeply about people and hated injustice, pain and suffering. A man of Russian, Jewish, Irish heritage with a famous martyr for a grandfather.
Peter Eugene Hugh Leviné entered my life with a flourish in 1988 when, on opening the post, I found four pages of closely written, beautiful handwriting, his CV and application to train in Transactional Analysis. Newly endorsed as a Provisional Teaching & Supervising Transactional Analyst, I was excited, nervous and eager. Desperate to form my first training group and worried there wouldn’t be enough interest. I now had a new challenge. Would someone with such a strong professional background and such obvious intellectual curiosity find anything remotely interesting in what I had to say? Could I, should I, dare to try and offer training to someone so knowledgeable and experienced?
Now thirty-three years later I sit at his graveside in disbelief waiting to say a final farewell to a man who had always seemed larger than life and would surely go on for ever. A flash of anger entered my soul.
‘This is too much, Pete! You can’t expect me to have ever imagined a day like this! You gone, me here. This isn’t how it should be. I DON’T want to feel like this!’
As suddenly as it came the anger went and waves of sadness, loss and desolation washed over me. Tears escaped and rolled down my cheek. The terrible, absolute finality of this moment. I looked round. So many of us had made the pilgrimage. So many loving, sad faces. So many eager to say a few words about Peter and what he had brough into our lives, including someone who took me to one side and told me that, as her Psychotherapist, Peter had helped her find the courage to re-engage with life in the face of an overwhelming urge to fall off the edge.
There was solace in the sharing, laughter remembering endearing foibles, comfort in closeness. A green burial in a most beautiful Yorkshire dale, the place he had chosen. There it was then. A life come full circle surrounded by love, warmth and tenderness. What seeds you have sown, Pete!
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‘Sa mort nous sépare. Ma mort ne nous réunira pas. C’est ainsi; il est déjà beau que nos vies aient pu si longtemps s’accorder.
His death separates us. My death will not reunite us. That is how it is; it is already truly fine that it has been possible for our lives to have been shared so closely for so long.’
Simone de Beauvoir[i]
[i] Read on the day of Peter’s burial by Alison Holland.