...working on an awesome idea for an underwater base, had all my items ready to dig out the area I had just filled in with sand. I was within the range of a conduit, so there was no chance of drowning.

GF calls me over so I drop into the Switch home menu for 5-10 minutes tops. Upon returning to the game I heard a cacophony of sounds as what seemed like a sudden acceleration of time, pop pop, nothing was visible on screen, just the wavy bars loading in the scene (more sounds.. dead). All within less than 5 seconds. 

Thinking nothing of it, I pressed respawn. My bed was previously destroyed and I had a bit of a journey to get back to my full inventory of loot. But I had just made the journey less then an hour prior. Upon returning to the scene, there was nothing. Not a scrap of the full inventory of items I was wearing, or had in my inventory...

I can only assume that the chunk I was in didn't load properly during the loading sequence that occurs upon returning to the game, and therefore all of the items I had, had nowhere to spawn into.

Guys, this was devastating to me. I'm new to Minecraft, I've never played it till the start of this summer. As much as I was inspired to create the idea of this base, all the video's I had been watching and learning cool things about redstone... I'm done. I'm okay with losing items when I die, I'm okay with griefing creepers that blow up right next to my storage system. But this didn't even allow me the chance to get anything back from a situation I had ZERO control over. I was preparing to buy the Java edition to play on my more capable mac, but I think I'm done with it all.

This was a very devastating bug, hope no one else has to experience it. Just a note, it's common for all of my other switch games to allow me the ability to return to the game menu. In minecraft, the switch menu allows me to check the real-world time. Being able to go to the Switch game menu, then return to minecraft without error is an essential feature.

How to Reproduce
Stand somewhere in-game where mobs have the potential to spawn. Have a respawn point that is too far to be within range of the adjacent chunks held in memory. Go to the switch home menu for a duration of time. Return to the game. During the loading screen die and press respawn. Return to the scene of the incident, and find that no items are salvageable from the death.