When George Harrison focused on dying — dying the right way — his wife Olivia intervened and beat his attacker with a fireplace poker.

A summary of what's in the Scorsese documentary "Living in the Material World" (which we watched over the weekend):

“Before I entered the fray,” Olivia said, “[the home intruder Michael Abram] would have finished off George right then and there.” Aghast at what was happening, Olivia grabbed a fireplace poker and began striking the tall, straw-haired intruder with it....



“There was a moment during the struggle,” Olivia said, “that I noticed that this silk hanging we had on the wall was getting covered in blood, and I thought, He’s winning. He’s going to kill us. We have to step it up and do this.”...

“He told me that his mind focused on letting go, leaving his body in the way that he wanted to go,” Olivia said. “He thought that he was being murdered, and he didn’t want to die on someone else’s terms. He told me, ‘I was lying there, thinking, I can’t believe this is happening! Well, I’d better just start getting with God, preparing.’”...

“I was just so impressed by George when he told me that that was what he’d been thinking,” she said. “But I was not ready to be killed. That’s when I came in with the fire poker.”

Not in that summary, but in the documentary, Olivia Harrison reveals that George spent a lot of his time preparing for death, following a religious conception about the importance of the way the soul departs from the body. And there he was that night — 2 years before he really did die, of cancer — framing his mind around dying well, and his wife clobbered the man with a poker.

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By the way, Abram was a schizophrenic. Acquitted in the criminal trial, he was confined for treatment and released after only 19 months. He said:

"People may find it hard to accept but with the help of the medication I'm on I am sure I can lead a normal life. I just want to be an ordinary bloke.... My illness was missed by almost all the doctors and nurses until I was turned out of a hospital while I was still very ill. If only the doctors had correctly identified my illness, it could have been avoided."

And, indeed, not long after the attack, the British authorities apologized "after an inquiry found 'significant failings' in the care of" Abram:

"Had there been better integration between the mental health services in Knowsley, Merseyside Drugs Council and the Criminal Justice Liaison Service and, indeed, better communication with Michael Abram's mother, Mr Abram may have received more appropriate treatment."