“Hey y’all, it’s Bedtime Snacktime,” says Donna Clements, 66, in a recent TikTok video. She’s in her kitchen, wearing polka-dotted pajamas with a bowl in front of her. “If you’re new here. I’m a recent widow, about five months.”
She explains that right before bed is the hardest time of day for her because she used to have a tradition with her husband of 43 years, Patrick, of chatting over a late-night snack — until he died in March.
Her latest snack is a bowl of Special K and sliced bananas, and she’s sharing it with us instead.
“I decided I would just do it on TikTok, because I was just aching to talk to somebody,” she says, adding that she’s looking forward to Labor Day weekend — but not going to bed.
“Pondering going upstairs tonight. Do you ever feel that way?” she asks. “Just maybe dread going to bed, or dread going in a certain room, or dread watching something? Don’t really want to go up there tonight, so I’m just having my snack here in the kitchen, just me and you talking about our day.”
Since early summer when she posted her first Bedtime Snacktime video, Clements has talked about childhood over French onion dip, growing tomatoes over BLTs and dear memories of her husband over blueberry white chocolate cheesecake. And her TikTok community has grown to nearly 493,000 followers, many of whom send her messages of support.
“So I have gotten to where I just can’t go to bed before seeing your bedtime snack time,” one person commented.
“I’m so happy I found your posts,” wrote another. “I’m a widow going on 3 years and I love your videos. I still miss my husband so much too.”
“Miss Donna I wish you could see all our faces on the other side,” posted someone else. “Maybe we should start posting in the comments our selfie as we listen.”
“If (Patrick) could be here and see this on TikTok, He just, I know he would, he just would not believe it,” Clements tells TODAY.com. “He would get the biggest kick out of what this has turned into.”
And while Bedtime Snacktime is just one facet of her social media presence, it has surrounded her with a community of online friends — many of whom are also mourning a loved one.
“Last night, somebody told me in the comments, ‘My husband’s been gone three years ago, and I’m still sleeping in my recliner. I’m not even able to go into that room,’” Clements says. “When it’s somebody in your life that’s made a difference or that you’ve connected with, things will remind you at the end, don’t they?”
Clements recalls, during their snack sessions, Patrick loved to have ice cream. Chocolate was his favorite. Other times, he’d go for cookies or peanut butter and crackers.
“He ate a lot of cereal and then sometimes, late at night, we would run to McDonald’s or run to the Crystal,” she says. But ice cream was always his “first choice.”
Over the past few months, Bedtime Snacktime and its community have helped her realize that “Everybody’s grief journey is different, and then in a lot of ways the same,” she says.
“When you’re going through grief, you wonder, ‘Is this normal? Is this not normal?’ One thing that so many people have said to me is, ‘Just give yourself grace.’ There’s no right or wrong way to grieve. We’re all different.
“It’s just a journey,” she continues. “You just walk it a day at a time” — or, in Clements’ case, one snack at a time.
