I carry my late son’s school thumb drive (it is metal and has a hole for a keychain), and it has a copy of the last video I ever took of him (6 days before his death), his last school picture, and his last voicemail to me.
Sorry for your loss. I hope you have multiple backup copies of those files somewhere. The flash storage on those drives are the cheapest of the cheap and it isn't unheard of for them to go belly up suddenly.