‘Aging in Place’ is a determined group struggle for Hingham family
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HINGHAM – In her heyday, Rose Cundari was a familiar figure around town, driving her daughter’s white 1960 Olds Delta 88 convertible with the red top, picking up her friends and waving at everyone they saw.
This was in the 1970s, long after she’d been a Rosie during World War II balancing cargo loads for merchant ships at the South Boston Army Base. She was working in the cafeterias at South Middle School and Hingham High School, a friendly, fun-loving presence.
“Everyone knew my mom,” Cecilia “Ceci” Doherty, one of Cundari’s four daughters, recalled. “Sometimes it was embarrassing, like when she wore the gorilla mask.”
With seven children, four girls and three boys, Cundari had plenty to do at home but was such a social creature that any chance she got to be out in the community, she took it.
“You make your own happiness,” she often said.
Early last February, before COVID-19 was recognized, Cundari got pneumonia and went from the hospital to Queen Anne Nursing Home for rehab. The care was excellent, her family said, but they planned to bring her home. Then the COVID virus began spreading and the state shut down. No visitors were allowed in skilled nursing homes.
At first, Cundari managed all right by seeing her large family though window visits, but by summer she looked listless and was withdrawing. The home did an assessment and she scored as depressed, something never seen in her before.
“I miss being with my family,” she said.
“We all talked it over and knew we had to find a way to try to bring her home,” her daughter Joan Endyke, of Hingham, said.
Rose Trifiro grew up in a cold-water flat in South Boston, an outgoing girl whose motto was “Do what you want to do, no regrets, because once it’s gone, it’s gone.”
She married Edward Cundari in 1953; the couple moved to Hingham in 1959 and raised seven children. Edward worked two jobs, as an accountant in Watertown and at the South Boston Postal Annex.
When the children got older, Rose worked at Gilchrist’s, Dress Barn and Dependable Cleaners. After that, she volunteered with Swim with a Special Child and got into the water with disabled young people in a Canton pool.
After her husband died in 2000, Rose filled her days with the Hingham Senior Center, youthful in spirit and activities. And then she got pneumonia.
“Queen Anne did an exceptional job and took care of our mom really well,” Endyke said. Even though Rose became close to her roommate, the lack of social contact with her family ate away at her.
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It has been touch and go, with an uncertain outcome, but the story of how Cundari’s children worked to bring her home still offers tips to other families who might think of doing the same.
All seven children had a role in renovating her small house so their mother could return.
They made it handicapped-accessible with a walk-in shower on the first floor and prepared quarters for a live-in caregiver upstairs, and they arranged for daily personal care attendants for meals, showering and dressing – “wrap-around care” with someone present 24/7.
Besides Endyke and Doherty, Esther Healey, of Hingham; Rose Lincoln, of Charlestown; Joseph Cundari, of Whitman; Charles Cundari, of Bridgewater; and Michael Cundari, of Hingham, have all pitched in.
“There are so many benefits,” Endyke said. “So many more social opportunities, to come see her, to go over anytime. But things do happen. If an aide can’t come, the family has to be ready to step in.
“It takes trial and error to find good, quality caregivers. You do still need to be involved. It is not as smooth as a nursing home, and cameras in the home are a good idea,” she said. “My brother Joe set them up and we can look in anytime and even talk to our mom if someone is late.”
The family looked for the live-in caregiver through schools of nursing, online and agencies. They feel they were lucky with the woman they found. She is there evenings and overnight, and North River Home Care aides come during the day.
“I love it,” Rose Cundari said recently as she sat outside her house for the 98th birthday car parade her family gave her. “I love having my family around. My house is like Grand Central Station.”
Last Thursday, two weeks after her parade, Cundari had another setback, but hope remains strong. She fell at home and broke her leg; she recently had surgery at South Shore Hospital in Weymouth.
The doctors told her family she is very strong for her age, and the family hopes to bring her back home again to “age in place” where she feels she belongs.
“If one of her seven children wanted something, Mom always worked hard to make it available,” her daughter Rose Lincoln, a professional photographer, said. “Growing up, when I wanted a good camera, she drove me to Cambridge to get my first one.”
And now, in the final chapter of her life, this fun-loving, outgoing, family-centered woman can still follow her motto: “If I could do it, I would. No regrets.”
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