AS TOLD TO BC PIRES

My name is Jacqueline Mary Scott and I wish my grown-up children could live with me.

I thought I knew everything at 24.

I grew up in Petit Valley – 3 Palm Avenue, to be exact – the last of five children.

I’m single now, but I have a seriously strong bond of love and friendship with my siblings and their spouses.

Our Scott cousins lived one house away from us and we had a lot of Valdez and Quesnel family in the Palm Avenue horseshoe, too. I totally consider myself to be a Valley girl. I’ve always been proud of how and where I grew up.

I then got married and lived with my ex-husband in Westmoorings and Maraval.

I’m really happy to be back in Diego Martin.

My father’s death in 2007 broke me open, like an earthquake. My world shifted and the cracks in my life became crevices.

My mum has had Alzheimer’s for years. It feels like we lost her a long time ago. I hope the grief is ours alone and she’s happy in whatever world her mind takes her to every day.

I have two adult children, twins, Keegan Toby and Cassie Jane O’Brien. They were 30 years old last July!

They are non-verbal, developmentally delayed and have a few other issues. They are doing very well and are healthy and very happy.

I come from a very Catholic background, a lot of priest uncles, an aunt who was a nun. Archbishop Anthony Pantin was a family friend.

But as soon as I was allowed to stop filing into that church bench with the rest of my family, I stopped going to Mass.

I believe in an extremely compassionate God greater than myself, but that God is very, very broad.

I don’t believe I’m going to hell because I had sex before marriage.

I don’t know why bad things happen to good people.

I could pray from now until kingdom come and my sick child could die. And your sick child, who nobody at all prayed for, could get better.

I attended Maria Regina Grade School and then on to SJC PoS. Literature, English, history, the subjects I loved, I got good marks.

I admire people who did well in school not because they had a good brain, but because they studied and applied themselves.

I did not. I regret it.

I’m always amazed at people who know exactly what they want to do at a young age and go after it.

I wanted to be a journalist and/or a model, but made no real effort to pursue either.

I only realised in my 50s that I never even knew what I wanted to be or who I was.

The truth is – and I’m ashamed to admit it because I always thought I was really smart – for all my enquiring mind and sense of adventure, I was brought up to believe I should be married and have children.

I was constantly fighting everybody in authority, acting out, drinking, smoking whatever, trying to find my way to myself…

And in the end I still got married at 24 and had children at 27. It’s astounding, really.

I turned 57 last month and I’m just beginning to understand what life is about.

People have said some the most awful things about my children and the fact that they kind of have no purpose on this earth. They can’t eve