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.