A Widower’s Midnight Confession Lights the Dark for Himself and His Son

29 August 2025

Hailey and Matthew Okula on TikTok. RNnewgrads/TikTok

Nearly five months after tragedy struck, firefighter Matt Okula offers an unfiltered glimpse into a grief that began the moment his wife, nursing influencer Hailey Okula, died from complications following childbirth. In a poignant video shared August 27 on Instagram, Matt cradles his infant son, Crew, in the darkness his eyes damp with tears, his voice thick with longing.

Over the footage, John Mayer’s tender lyric “You’re gonna live forever in me” underscores a scene both intimate and devastating. “We’re coming up on five months without Hailey,” his caption reads. “I promised I’d be transparent and share the good and the bad, so here it is.” He admits some nights are unbearable: “Some nights I’m crying in the dark, wishing she could be here to hold him, to see him, to live the life she worked so hard for. It’s all so bittersweet. We miss and love you, Hailey.” 

That video builds on Matt’s earlier reflections. In July, four months after losing Hailey, he posted a raw update describing the time that followed as “the hardest, most emotional, confusing time” of his life. He candidly shared how he moved forward grieving while learning to raise their son alone, still managing Hailey’s RN New Grads platform for aspiring nurses. He pledged to honor her unwavering honesty by continuing to share both grief and peace. “You won’t just see highlights, and you won’t just see the grief. You’ll see both, because both are real.” 

Matt’s outpouring carries profound layers: the lingering sorrow of a wife lost to an amniotic fluid embolism moments after giving birth, the joy of a child born after years of infertility and IVF, and the burden of fulfilling the parenting role they once envisioned together. In recalling that they were able to choose their son’s sex but could not prevent Hailey’s death, Matt laments poetic and cruel irony highlighting the limitations of science in the face of unpredictable tragedy. 

The 2025 birth of Crew followed a long and difficult journey. Hailey, known online as “Nurse Hailey,” had openly chronicled their IVF struggles with transparency and warmth, cultivating a dedicated following. Her legacy lives on through RN New Grads, the mentoring platform she founded in 2019 to support newly graduated nurses. It is this same transparency and support that Matt now champions for his son’s future and the nursing community Hailey helped foster. 

Yet grief is not linear, and Matt has shared that the darkest nights are when Hailey’s absence feels most acute when the lullaby for Crew echoes in empty arms. There are, he says, fleeting moments of peace “little small pieces of peace” but more often, it’s hour by hour, step by step, that he moves forward. And always with Crew in his arms and Hailey in his heart. 

In sharing his experience so transparently, Matt breaks through the stereotype of stoic masculinity in grief. Instead he models vulnerability, demonstrating that love can persist beyond trauma, and that healing begins when pain is acknowledged not hidden. Each tear-filled moment recorded, each raw admission shared, becomes a tribute not just to the life given and lost, but to the father determined to guide his son by example. 

This story is, at its core, one of resilience. It brings into sharp relief how life’s most profound joys and agonies can intertwine. A newborn’s cry rises alongside suppressed sobs, and in that fragile lullaby lies the yearn to continue a story interrupted too soon. Matt Okula’s journey forward through nights heavy with tears toward days illuminated by memory and hope charts a new path for love to live.