Rupture
Sometimes things just break
When I got the call that my Dad was going to the Emergency Room with heart pain, my sink was full of dirty dishes and my yard was full of fallen trees.
Portugal had been lashed by storms for more than two weeks at that point. Buildings destroyed, towns flooded, hundreds evacuated, thousands without electricity, sixteen dead.
Tempestade Kristin swept in from the sea in the small hours between a Monday and a Tuesday the last week of January, and battered the country with winds that leveled entire fields of trees. Gusts of 208 km/h (129 mph) were recorded in the town of Soure, which was directly in the path of the raging storm.
In Palmela, I lay awake from two until sunrise, listening as first one tall pine cracked and then another and then, finally, the really big one with a trunk so wide it would have taken four people standing arms outstretched to span her girth.
You don’t need to have heard the sound of a tree splintering apart before to know what it is when it comes.
You don’t need to have ever gotten a call about a heart attack before, either, to register its weight when the moment arrives.
It was my sister on the other end of the line. The one who lives closest, who bears the daily brunt of my mother’s dementia and my father’s stubborn insistence on doing things his way, better angels be damned.
He doesn’t often tell us when something is wrong, so she was relieved he called her about his chest pain. He drove himself to the hospital. Packed his seed catalog so he’d have something to read. Stopped for a Subway sandwich on the way into town.
My brother-in-law was with him when the doctor said they wanted to admit him, that there were signs his heart was under severe stress. It was a Saturday, though. They wouldn’t be able to do the test they wanted to do until Monday. My dad balked, “Naaaah, I think I’m just gonna go home and I’ll make an appointment later.”
My brother-in-law made eye contact with the doctor. She crouched down so she could look my dad full in his grizzled face. “Mr. Witmer,” she said gently, “I know you have obligations at home, with your wife. But to be frank, you’re not going to be able to take care of your wife if you’re dead.”
He decided to stay. That decision, and the doctor’s bluntness, saved his life.
They wheeled him into surgery 36 hours later. Propped his arteries open with two separate stents. One of them was 75% blocked. The other, the left anterior descending artery, was worse: 99% clogged. That’s the artery they call “the widowmaker.” It supplies blood to half of your heart. Lose it and you’re dead.
Kristin wasn’t the only storm that hit Portugal. Harry, Ingrid, and Joseph brought wind and rain in January before she wreaked her havoc, and Leonardo and Marta intensified the damage in the first days of February.
Meanwhile, the country elected a new President and the Epstein files laid bare the true faces of the rich and powerful. My internet feed was smeared with rage. The gray days dripped past, one after another full of flotsam and fracture. Inside, outside, everywhere.
I thought a lot about the things that break. Storms. Trees. Hearts. Faith.
I thought about how futile are the things we do to protect ourselves. How little truly lies within our control.
Ten hours before Kristin reached us, my phone dinged with a text message from the Portuguese government: “Strong winds up to 140 km/h in the next few hours in your area,” it read. “Stay alert.”
Alert, I went out and locked the green metal shutters closed to protect the windows. I moved outdoor chairs, relocated potted plants, battened every hatch I could reach. The sky was softly glowing. Not a breath of wind stirred a leaf. In the yard that lines the house on the side where all our bedrooms are situated, nine trees stood tall and calm. I went out to them, laid my hands against their bark, whispered words of affirmation. You are strong. Your roots run deep. You will not fall. I repeated the words to each tree, imagined it penetrating their woody hearts like a spell. Like protection. You will not fall.
Leiria, a beautiful town on the banks of the Lis River just a two hour drive north, felt the full power of Kristin’s fury. Roofs ripped apart, stadiums shredded, houses collapsed, roads impassible, trees leveled as if with a god-sized scythe.
At our quinta we lost three massive pine trees to the storm, each trunk ruptured several feet above the ground. In Leiria, they’re estimating that five to eight million trees are gone.
It’s been 25 days now since Kristin. Today, the sun came out as it always does, eventually. With it came our chainsaws. We will be cleaning up for months. Will have firewood for years. We are lucky, lucky, lucky to be otherwise unscathed.
In Illinois, my father is recovering nicely. He, too, gets a reprieve. We get to keep him a while longer.
More storms will come, we don’t know when. But for now, the light is golden. Isn’t that just the way of it?
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Copyright © 2026 LaDonna Witmer • {all photos by author, except where otherwise noted}
Beautifully wrought
The storms of life, then the sun.