>Steps:
>1) die
>2) go to your corpse, and pick up all items
>3) have the server crash (it was around 9am EST, Dec 11; I'm
>99% sure it was a crash)

Corpses and pfiles are saved separately. So, the corpse was saved in the crash, while in case of the pfile, the last autosave situation was recalled. Thus, you hadn't picked up the gear yet as a character, but the gear was picked up from the corpse by the unsaved version of your character. If you save the game after picking the stuff from your corpse, you won't risk losing your stuff in a potential crash. The luck isn't often so ####ty that you lose gear like that. As improvement suggestion, I think that the game could automatically save your pfile when you get stuff from your own corpse?

Welcome to CF and good luck with regearing. Fortunately, losing your gear isn't the end of the world in this game and you can spring back on your feet in a reasonable amount of time.