When Bridget McGing closed on her fixer-upper house on March 10, 2023, on Chicago’s north side, she was eager to renovate the attic. Starting that October, her dad Bill, a retired contractor, came over daily to help with the project.
Retired contractor Bill McGing died on June 24, 2024, at age 65, after spending his days working on daughter Bridget’s new fixer-upper with her.
Their routine began with coffee in the living room, where they chatted and listened to Bill’s stories before starting work. Bill taught Bridget how to use tools like a drill, saw, and level, and they spent hours upstairs, often referring to design notes he jotted down on paper, which he’d photograph and send to her since he wasn’t entirely comfortable using his phone.
The 32-year-old nurse had been passionate about real estate since childhood. HGTV and home renovation shows were always on in the background, fueling her interest, which she inherited from her dad. As a child, she and her family would visit job sites to bring him lunch, sitting on five-gallon buckets while he worked.
“I have three siblings, and our dad always wanted to help us fix up whatever home we were in,” Bridget tells PEOPLE exclusively. “He helped me with my last condo, my sister with hers, and the others too. He’s always been there to help us create nicer spaces wherever we lived.”
During the renovation, Bridget’s friends and family encouraged her to share her progress on TikTok and Instagram. She started posting videos, which received positive feedback. To her surprise, her dad created an Instagram account and began following her. He suggested things they could film, provided commentary, and joined in on the fun. It became a special bonding activity, though sadly one of the last they’d share.
In March 2024, just as the attic renovations were gaining momentum, Bill was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer. Bridget says he had been experiencing fatigue, memory loss, and uncomfortable sensations, which doctors later identified as seizures.
Before the diagnosis, Bill had been hospitalized, but doctors couldn’t determine the cause of his discomfort. During a follow-up appointment, they suggested it might be his blood pressure, but Bridget and her mom, a nurse practitioner, felt something was seriously wrong. They insisted on imaging of his head, and while they were on their way home from the imaging center, they received the call that he had a brain tumor. Bill was immediately admitted to the hospital and underwent his first surgery.
“We were in shock,” Bridget recalls. “We kept asking, ‘How is this happening to us?’ There’s no history of brain cancer in the family. He’s our dad. He’s so tough and strong.”
“I know he was suffering and in pain. It was really hard to watch him,” she continues. “He would’ve done anything to get better. He’s the hardest worker any of us know, and he fought so hard with his physical therapy. The hardest part was watching him suffer because it’s not fair. Nobody deserves that. But to watch your dad go through it, it’s heart-wrenching.”
After Bill’s diagnosis, Bridget put all renovation projects on hold to care for him. But she knew he would want her to continue the project. A couple of months later, she resumed the work, and the support from her community was overwhelming. Some of Bill’s friends came by to finish the electrical work, including an electrician Bill had trained. Since then, Bridget has also hired contractors to keep the project moving forward.
While Bill’s illness prevented him from giving much advice in his final days, he often expressed a desire to return to the attic. Bridget updated him on the project, and even though he was less aware toward the end, it provided them both with something positive to focus on.
“I had to remove all of his tools and our stuff from the attic so others could come in and help,” Bridget says. “That was really hard, like the end of a chapter. At that point, he was still alive, but I knew we wouldn’t work together again.”
Throughout Bill’s cancer journey, up until his death at age 65 on June 24, 2024, Bridget continued sharing updates on their project on TikTok. After his death, she posted a video sharing the sad news; the clip has more than 21 million views.
Some people on TikTok suggested she put a picture of him in the attic framing or write him a note, which she thought was a wonderful idea.
“I don’t want people to feel sorry for me,” Bridget says. “I started sharing this journey, and people followed along. The most important thing is that the project reflects who he was as a person, not his diagnosis. He’s my dad, and this is a sad thing that happened, but I wanted to honor the project we started together. I know he would have wanted me to continue.”
After her dad died, Bridget initially avoided going up to the attic. She was nervous about insulating and drywalling because the last time her dad was up there, none of that was in place. It felt like a significant change, and she was sad to be doing it without him.
However, she eventually needed to clean it out to make way for new work. Although she was apprehensive about how she would feel, she asked her sister to join her. Together, they played music and talked while Bridget worked. Despite the difficulty, her sister’s support helped her reconnect with the project and find peace in moving forward.
Currently, Bridget is painting the attic. Leading up to this point, she says one morning when the insulators were coming, she was lying in bed alone and thought she heard footsteps upstairs. She texted her sister about what she’d heard.
“She was the one who said, ‘He’s just doing one final inspection.’ And I agreed with her,” she shares. “I felt him around, smiling down on me. I truly believe he was up there, checking it out and giving his approval.”
