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this is the generic script you're looking for. The only downside is your commands are in quotes which means syntax highlighting via your IDE will not really work. Otherwise, I have tried a couple of the other answers and this is the best one. This answer incorporates the idea of using wait <pid> given by @Michael but goes a step further by using the trap command which seems to work best.

#!/usr/bin/env bash

set -m # allow for job control
EXIT_CODE=0;  # exit code of overall script

function handleJobs() {
     for job in `jobs -p`; do
         echo "PID => ${job}"
         CODE=0;
         wait ${job} || CODE=$?
         if [[ "${CODE}" != "0" ]]; then
         echo "At least one test failed with exit code => ${CODE}" ;
         EXIT_CODE=1;
         fi
     done
}

trap 'handleJobs' CHLD  # trap command is the key part
DIRN=$(dirname "$0");

commands=(
    "{ echo 'a'; exit 1; }"
    "{ echo 'b'; exit 0; }"
    "{ echo 'c'; exit 2; }"
)

clen=`expr "${#commands[@]}" - 1` # get length of commands - 1

for i in `seq 0 "$clen"`; do
    (echo "${commands[$i]}" | bash) &   # run the command via bash in subshell
    echo "$i ith command has been issued as a background job"
done

wait; # wait for all subshells to finish

echo "EXIT_CODE => $EXIT_CODE"
exit "$EXIT_CODE"
# end

thanks to @michael homer for getting me on the right track, but using trap command is the best approach AFAICT.