The past week has been horrid. I can barely watch the news it’s so upsetting.

My wife, on the other hand, is a news junkie. She keeps it running all day long. I suspect it is the ICU nurse in her. She is used to monitoring situations that could easily go sideways in minutes. She is used to knowing what to do if they do. I don’t think she would know what to do if the US, Nato and Russia started shooting at each other. Back in the day, when I was a kid, the advice was to duck and cover.

My wife is kindly wearing earphones during the day so I don’t have to overhear the news. At 4 PM, I emerge from my studio and we watch Nicole Wallace together on MSNBC. I can handle the news if Nicole delivers it and I have a martini in my hand.

I am very frightened. Some part of me believes it is quite possible I am going to die soon.

While on Block Island, during the first few days of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, I was taking sunrise walks along a stretch of beach that looked out over the Atlantic to the east. I couldn’t keep myself from imagining cruise missiles streaking past on their way to annihilating my country. So much for soothing ocean vibes.

The older I get, the more afraid of dying I am. I try not to be. I tell myself to live the moments as they come; enjoy them; revel in them. It is the better way to think of things, but of course, that is not easy.

Every night I watch interviews with brave, confident, terrified, and/or desperate Ukrainians. Some of them have been on TV successive nights. Each time I see them, I wonder, will I see them tomorrow? Or will the Russians have caught up with them? It is traumatizing to watch, even from such a distance, the horrors being inflicted on the Ukrainian people. More than a million refuges. Cities being reduced to rubble. How many dead?

A great part of my despair comes from not knowing how the world exits this situation without blowing itself up. The US and NATO have been clear and consistent in saying they will not put troops on the ground or planes in the air to help Ukraine. Everyone understands that direct combat with Russia is World War III and nobody imagines that would end well for either side or humanity in general.

But, if one arms one country against another; if one organizes the collapse of that other country’s economy; if one supplies intelligence, even if it stops short of targeting that other country’s assets; if one is doing everything one can to bring that other country to its knees; isn’t one at war with them?

Nightly, the punditry asks, what is the end game? Where is the off ramp? To date, none of them has been able to give me hope there is one.

I go on being afraid.