Everything's gone - permanently

My hard drive experienced a catastrophic failure back in late November. 4 years of photos were on it, most I do not have disk backup for. We just received word this morning from the data recovery folks that nothing is recoverable. End of story. Finito.

All our photos from when we adopted Igor 4 years ago...gone. Kids birthdays, holidays - all gone. Now I have a small sense of what people experience after losing personal items in a fire or other natural disaster. Granted, our home is still intact...but I'm still very sad.