Strategies you've developed to cope if you lost precious letters, photos or similar...

[WoodlandLove]

I really need some help here. I lost my wonderful dad about six months ago. I'm grieving enormously. We had such a close bond. On Wednesday morning I felt it was time, and would be comforting, to read through some of his old emails to me. He'd sent so many lovely emails to me, especially in the last couple of years.
I started to scroll down, and to my utter horror I realised the last circa 7 years of my parents' emails were gone. Just gone, apart from a few I'd unknowingly archived (most were in my inbox). I frantically scrolled and searched over & over again, but nothing 😩
I've no idea what happened, but my best guess is that, at some point, in the distracting throes of grief, I accidentally clicked on one when I was sweeping some other emails from companies etc.
I checked the deleted folder, but nothing. It looks like it happened in January of this year, as there are new ones from my mum from around then.
I'm tentatively hopeful that my mum might have copies of at least some, maybe all, on their desktop computer sent folder 🙏 and I'm also going to a computer shop hopefully later today to see if they know if there's any way data retrieval people can find them somewhere. But, if not, and if they're irretrievably gone, I'm going to have to find a strategy to cope with the loss.
I'm absolutely devastated, and feel extremely guilty. I treasured those emails, so why on earth had I not archived them all? 🤦‍♀️ As you can see by the time, it's keeping me up at night. It's triggered another wave of grief, and is a huge, compounding loss in itself.
I know I'm not alone in having this happen to me. So, I wondered if anyone has any wisdom for me going forward? I'm feeling pretty desperate.

If you replied to any of them, have you checked your own sent folder to see if some might be in there as part of your replies?

I'm sorry for your loss and hope you'll find your mum can forward you copies.

Thank you for responding. Yes, I've got some of them below replies in my sent folder. Not all. I was very relieved to discover those. But there are still, possibly 100s, missing. I think many will actually have been from my mum (they used the same email address) and I'm sad to lose those too. My mum isn't very tech savvy, and seemed to be a bit confused about their sent folder and scrolling down far enough etc. So, I might have to wait till I'm next in Ireland at my parents' house. I'm in England.
I'm giving myself a really hard time for having not noticed before they left the deleted folder 😔
I know accidental email deletion is a fairly common phenomenon, as well as letters and photos etc getting lost and damaged. I guess people have to find strategies to make their peace with it. But, I'm feeling distraught at the moment.

Oh this is so hard.

This happened to me - my old Yahoo email account got deleted, with 20 years’ worth of emails from my parents and my brother and my first love (and second and third and fourth loves…) & all my best friends from my youth. It was a pristine archive of my life from age 18 to nearly 40.

I felt utter panic and desolation and sorrow for a few days, like the ground had been pulled out from under me. And eventually there was nothing for it but to accept there was nothing more I could do.

And while I continued to get horrible pangs over the next few weeks and months, I kept reminding myself I was OK and I still loved my loved ones, and I had still had those experiences, and I still had those memories, and life was all right, and I was surviving.

But my God I remember that feeling - like coming home to find your house has been burgled, except it’s not your house but the entire emotional context of your life.

It does get easier with time.

Hang in there 💐

Thank you so much for this. I'm so sorry for you too that you lost all those sentimental emails. That must have been devastating, and you describe your feelings over the following days so well.
Yes, it absolutely feels the way you describe. When I first noticed they were gone, I started shaking with the shock and horror of it.
I'm so glad to hear you found ways to eventually recover. Do you ever still get those pangs? Or have you fully moved on from it now?
Thank you so much for your empathy and insight ❤️

I'll obviously be very relieved if there are copies on my parents' computer. But, I'm anxious, as my mum said she couldn't find many, or very far back, on her phone. Though I don't think her phone and the desktop were synced. So, hopefully...
I think I need to prepare myself for the worst though just in case.
I'm usually so careful to not accidentally delete emails, and I think never intentionally delete the ones from friends and family. So, I don't know how it happened. I can only put it down to stress and grief that caused me to not notice if I accidentally clicked on one and pressed sweep when sweeping others. If only I'd realised within the 30 days, as I'd have been able to get them back from the deleted folder. I can't believe it.

I’ve lost a lot of photos when my house was flooded. I still haven’t got over it nearly 20 years later.
Also got locked out of an email account with correspondence between someone from my past who I reconnected with . We have lost touch again but those precious conversations are gone forever. I cannot get back into that email however hard I try . There is no phone line to call, just a generic reset your password which I keep failing. If anyone has the answer I would be most grateful!

It’s really heart breaking but it doesn’t seem like you have any choice but to accept it.

Oh poor you. Losing photos to a flood must have been terrible. I lost a load of photos of one of my old childhood dogs. The place I'd stored them was damp, and I didn't realise they weren't wrapped up in such away that the damp could ruin them. I was absolutely devastated then too. I still feel upset when I think about that.
I know what you mean about no phone line. I've been desperately trying to find the Outlook customer support phone number to speak to someone, as they might be able to retrieve them for me. But, I can't find anything.
It seems online data is pretty fragile, and liable to get lost. If I can't get them back I'll have to grieve their loss. The guilt I feel about not having realised earlier that I'd accidentally swept them (I assume that's what happened) is paralysing.

I think you see, it's not just that I feel sad about the loss of the emails, it's also enormous guilt about my dad. If it was the case that I accidentally pressed sweep when one of the emails was open, or accidentally clicked on one of the emails when I was sweeping emails from companies or something, then I feel to blame, and just terrible, as I'd never want to do anything other than honour my lovely dad.
If I can't get them back, I somehow have to find a way to forgive myself, in addition to dealing with the sadness.
I guess all it takes is a momentary lapse of concentration to make such a mistake. Or it could even have been my hand slipping on the tablet when I was very tired. Ironically my grief and love for my dad would be a big cause of that. My current housing situation is very stressful too, so that might have contributed to my having lost concentration for a moment. What a nightmare 😥

I have lost all my pre iPhone printed photos, from childhood, uni, when my children were born and my wedding albums. I believe they were thrown away by my ex husband, perhaps by accident but he is dead and I cannot ask. I remember some of those photos so vividly and I feel very sad but life moves on and I have all those great memories.

Sorry I wanted to add that you will feel less guilt and things will improve, try to do something you enjoy each day, sounds silly but it has really made a difference for me when grieving. You won’t feel like doing anything but please try even if it’s going for a short walk or chatting to a friend. I’m sorry you are having a tough time, you will get through it.

@Thisisnotthelifeisignedupfor thank you. I'm so sorry about all the photos you lost. Thank you also for the advice about nice daily things.
I know my dad wouldn't want me to feel guilty, and it was an accident. I'd never ever have deliberately deleted any sentimental emails. I don't even know how it happened, so it might actually not have been something I did, but I assume it was, and I can't shake the guilt. I also feel guilty that I hadn't archived them all and they'd have been much less likely to be accidentally deleted.
I'm struggling to think about anything else. But, I only discovered this less than 48 hours ago, so maybe I'll be able to be more philosophical in a few days or weeks. I don't think I'll know about the sent ones on my parents' computer until I'm next visiting my mum, as she's struggling to find out and I don't want her to get stressed.
The more I search online the more it seems most people have some kind of comparable sad tale to tell 😔

is there any chance these have been auto archived?

i had something similar and eventually realised whole swathes of emails had simply disappeared.

I have no idea how you recover them in that situation but I would definitely seek advice from a computer geek.

Also is there any chance that you have backed up your email files to an external drive? I did that two years ago when replacing my laptop battery. I haven’t tried to restore from that back up because I would be worried about overwriting more recent emails, but again if I needed too I would seek advice from someone who knows what they are doing.

One thing I would do in your position is to immediately back up the remaining emails onto a portable hard drive or memory stick. I would copy them into a Word document (so you don't risk anything with the actual emails) and then save the Word document onto the physical storage and put it somewhere safe. You could even print it out if you want to be extra sure. That task will keep you busy and help you feel you have done something concrete.

I hope the lost emails are retrievable. It's supposed to be very difficult to delete things completely from any device, as criminals sometimes find to their cost, so someone suitably technical might be able to retrieve them.

who is the email provider? Is it outlook or are you just using the outlook software?

Can you not log in with her account and password? Perhaps your dad also drafted the emails onto another system like Word before pasting onto email?

I feel for you I lost my dad a few years ago but those memories are still in my mind.

Thank you. I've checked the archive and found a few there from 2020. But, the rest I fear probably did somehow get accidentally deleted. I'm so used to sweeping unwanted emails that I'm wondering if I one really tired grief-filled evening I accidentally swept them on autopilot without knowing.
I didn't even know you could back them up. I'm not working today, so going to a computer shop to ask/beg for advice. I'm clinging to hope 🙏

Thank you. That's a good idea. All the ones below my replies in the sent folder. At least I've got those, and they seem extra precious now.
I'll do all I can to retrieve the others though.

It's Outlook.

I could. But, I'm clinging to hope there are more there, and if it turns out there aren't, then I don't think I could take the disappointment today. I need to be ready and steel myself, if that makes sense.
It's triggered another massive wave of grief, and I'm pretty distraught.
Thank you. I'm sorry about your dad too. I was such a Daddy's girl, so I'm finding the grief horrendous. I'm almost finding it harder 6 months on than around the funeral time I was in the denial/shock stage then. I'm clinging to any remaining communication from him, including the emails. With hindsight it seems so obvious I should have put them in a file somewhere, but it really didn't before this. They'd been there years after all.
Anyway, there's always hope 🙏

If it gives you hope, there was one occasion I logged onto my work Outlook account and randomly found my inbox full of 'unread' emails from, not joking, 7 years ago. IT sorted it out and got my current inbox back but I have no idea where the old emails had come from, it was just a snapshot in time of an old inbox, not emails I'd saved or anything.

Ah, thank you. That does give me hope.
Technology is a weird thing!
I do have an unexplained faith that they'll be somewhere. I don't think it was long ago they got deleted (definitely not before January this year).

It's an irony that grief probably caused me to have this accident, and the accident (of email deletion unknowingly) has added to my grief.
I've done all sorts of daft things since losing my dad - losing things, dropping things, tripping over. It's like I'm not completely here.
I'm generally very careful, risk averse, attentive to detail, non-scatty, non-accident prone etc. Grief really does weird things to you...

Anyway, thank you again. They probably exist somewhere 🙏

We attach all sort of importance and emotion to things during grief. It feels like dishonouring your dad to have swept emails away with company spam. You know in your heart it’s nothing of the sort.

I get it. I upgraded my phone in store and the assistant failed to carry over some old messages from my dad, who had been gone years by then and I’d always managed to keep the messages between phones. When you’ve been howling with pain and sobbing in the middle of an Apple store, you know how much these things matter!!

There was nothing they could do to get them back and it still upsets me 10 years later.

At the same time, I try and remember they were only words in a screen and I can still feel the love behind them. Doesn’t always work!

Thank you so much @SoScarletItWas . Yes, you definitely understand ❤️
If I can't get them back, I'll find some other ways with the remaining ones to honour my dad. I still just can't believe it's happened...
I've been trying to comfort myself a bit with the thought that emails are never permanent (unless they keep copies in Heaven - not actually joking) as apparently email accounts get deleted after they've been dormant for a couple of years or so. So, I guess me having them is as a kind of emotional comfort blanket, just knowing they're there, to get me through the grief of the loss.

Anyway, I've been to the computer shop, and they told me to bring my tablet in and that Outlook might have automatically saved them on a file somewhere. It's also possible they're on a file on my parents' computer. But that's in Ireland.
Of course they might be in the sent folder, but not sure if they all will.
One thing that comforted me a bit is that I discovered a load of emails from their old email address. They changed their email address in late 2017, so I've got lots from 2012 to 2017. It's the ones from their newer email address that got deleted. So, I'll cherish those older ones, and put them somewhere very safe.
The computer shop said there is a data retrieval guy locally who might be able to help me if all else fails.
I'm hoping for the best, preparing for the worst, and wondering if it might be a case of settling for something in between.

The other unfortunate thing about this is that in spite of the huge grief, I spent quality time with my dad not long before he died, and told him I loved him, so felt grateful that I had nothing to reproach myself for. Now, 6 months on, the accidental deletion of his emails makes me feel I've REALLY got something to reproach myself for. I feel desperately guilty that I might have been the cause of sweeping the emails (probably was) albeit totally accidentally, and with no awareness whatsoever until two days ago.
Thank you again for your kind words, and solidarity for your loss too x

Little update - yesterday evening I started to feel slightly less guilty and slightly less distressed.
I was chatting to a friend of a friend about it, and she carried a lot of guilt for a while about having lost her late dad's watch 5 years after he died. But, eventually she realised that it didn't alter the fact she cherished it and would have done anything to get it back. She hadn't dishonoured her dad, she'd just had an accident of losing his watch, accidents happen and we all have them. Her dad wouldn't have minded, and it upset her not him.
So, I thought, yes, I just made a mistake, a universal aspect of being human. I made a mistake when I was stressed, exhausted, grief-stricken. I know my dad wouldn't mind. He had a great sense of humour, and found comedy in most situations, so knowing him he'd probably find humour in the situation that I've kept these emails years, cherished them, but then succeeded in accidentally deleting the lot in a split second! 🤦‍♀️At precisely a time when they meant more to me than ever before.
It's only 3 days since discovering their loss, so if I can't get them back, I reckon I can come up with creative ways to make it OK, at least to the point I don't cry every time I think about it. Regardless, I'm still clinging to hope I'll get them back. In fact I know I'll get at least some of them back, because my mum messaged to say she can't see them far back, but it says there are more in the sent folder than she could see. So, I wonder if she simply hasn't scrolled down far enough? Thought she'd got to the bottom but hadn't. So some hope there. Even if it only goes back to 2024 (all she could see) that still gives me the last 18 months or so. So, that's something.
I think it's something (whether I get them back or not) that'll make me wince for the rest of my life when I think about it. But, I don't think anyone over approximately the age of 25 doesn't have something that makes them wince when thought about. It's also something to learn from...
I'm still going to throw the kitchen sink at finding them; but if I can't, I don't think it's quite as terrible a disaster as I thought yesterday, when I felt sick thinking about it. Thank you all so much for your help. I'll let you know if I manage to get them back 🙏

We had a huge house fire and lost so much stuff. Some of the Christmas decorations from my childhood and the DC’s ones that we got every year. Very old family pictures. Clothes I had kept from my teens and early 20’s (I had a treasure trove of 90’s and early 2000’s Topshop which my 18 and 20 year old girls would have loved now), all my letters to and from friends at uni (I went before email was really a huge thing), baby stuff I’d wanted to keep for any grandchildren, a wooden owl on a pole that my Grandad and Dad had made and used to take to every Sheffield Wednesday game with them. (As well as day to day stuff like all our clothes and furniture but whilst a huge pain that wasn’t as bad as the stuff I’d deliberately kept over the years).
Honestly I still feel A bit bereft over it all-I cried so many tears at Christmas without my ancient ornaments and ones the girls made in nursery that I used to love to hang every year. I almost didn’t bother with a tree. Of course we were lucky to all be safe after the fire and all that and I’m grateful for it, and after all it’s just stuff. But it’s stuff I loved and I think it’s ok to grieve it every so often.