Dying in Winter?

Something I hadn’t really thought of before is dying in winter. I kind of always assumed I would die in the summer. But what happens when people die in the winter? Maybe in places such as Victoria this is not as big of an issue, but further north it must be. Having lived in the Yukon for a lot of my life, and for many winters, I know how frozen the ground can get. I can only imagine how hard it must be to dig a grave in that ground. Even in the summer there is permafrost everywhere which keeps the ground frozen hard.

I found an article from a newspaper “Burials Are a Rite of Spring in Alaska” (http://articles.latimes.com/2004/may/09/news/adna-dead9) that briefly talks about winter burials in Alaska. It has become more common for Alaskans to preserve the bodies until they can be buried in the spring. It is still common to bury them in the winter outside of the bigger communities though most often they are Native Alaskans. Of course storing the bodies over the winter above ground does not really pose a problem as the temperatures are so cold that they remain frozen until they can be buried in the spring. Having to wait up to six months after the death and funeral of a relative to bury them could be especially hard on some people as they may have only just started to move on from the experience.

Winter burials in Alaska, or lack thereof, is interesting because in the Yukon cemeteries must be open year round for burials. Most likely they would have to wait a little bit longer to bury the deceased as it would take longer to dig the grave in the winter than it would in the summer. Section 55 in the Cemeteries Bylaw for Whitehorse, Yukon (http://www.whitehorse.ca/modules/showdocument.aspx?documentid=297) mentions this by saying that two working days’ notice is required for a plot to be prepared in the summer and three working days’ notice in the winter. As far as I know there is no policy in Canada to store the bodies of the deceased over the winter due to freezing and snow. Maybe Canada is more aware of the trauma one might experience in having to wait months for the burial of their deceased relative?

I haven’t been to many funerals and burials in my life thankfully, but they ones that I have been to have been in the summer. There was one that I went to when I was quite a bit younger that I know there was still snow on the ground for but it was in spring and I wasn’t at the burial. As much as I hope that I don’t die in winter, I am glad that I live in Canada and not the U.S.A. because I would definitely not like to be stored in a freezer for the rest of the winter!