i was underground in a custom village i had built, crouched in a corner on a bed defending myself from an iron golem, i was using a diamond sword, as well i was equipped with good diamond armour a shield and many other things in my nearly full inventory. the iron golem hit me several times before it killed me. after i died i choose to spawn immediately and grab my stuff. it took me less than 15 seconds to retrieve my things but oppon double checking i had nothing in my inventory other than my armour shield and a lectern i had in my inventory when i died. i tired reloading the world several times before the despawn timer was up, and i even tore down all the walls around the location where i died. this bug cost me 20 hours of work at least, and i would genuinely appreciate if whoever is reading this takes care to properly review and fix this. this was extremely frustrating to deal with. and i'm going to now have to spend many hours of my own time dealing with the issue as well.
while i was being killed i experienced a very large lag spike as well, which may help explain what happened but honestly i think it just despawned unreasonably fast