Items vanished after drop

I made a tunnel straight down about 60 blocks i believe to my mine form the top and filled it with water. As I was coming up I started to drown but expected that might happen. When I respawned, all my items (full i inventory) was gone poof vanished. I checked top and bottom, checked each level of my mine where the tunnel went through and nothing spawned outside the tunnel I died in. I removed the water and still no items. Tried exiting and reloading but still nothing. I lost all my enchanted gear and items without any way to recover them. I did this at my base so there's plenty of infrastructure for me to know there's no corner left unchecked.