Last time I had such an issue was when I died to a 2* draugr in one of the body pile circles in the swamp, with the body pile inaccessible under a branch.

Luckily there was a crypt nearby that I had opened, so I was able to run up to my gravestone, grab a couple of things randomly, run to the crypt, equip, and repeat until I actually got what I needed.

I still think that a better prioritization of item selection would be a huge improvement for such situations.

FWIW, I play no-portal, which makes such situations much more difficult, depending on where it was that I died. In this case I had an outpost nearby that I think I was able to grab some things from, but that's not always the case.

That, of course, is self imposed, so not entirely relevent, but, even when I played with portals I got myself into some pretty bad situation. :-)