Terry Romanski says he knew by the May long weekend that something bad had happened to his son.
Terry runs a sandblasting business in Alberta. He said his son Chad Romanski, 31, struggled with addictions through much of his adult life — sobriety was a moving target — but that Chad never completely lost touch with family. By May, Chad was living “all over” in Saskatoon and fighting, again, to get clean, Terry said.
Terry said he got what proved to be a final text from Chad at 1:16 a.m. on May 13.
“Dad, can you send me $30, I’m running low on gas?”
There were no texts or phone calls after that.
Days later, Chad’s white Dodge Journey turned up on the 1500 block of Avenue F N., the keys still in it.
The family reported his disappearance to police and made a missing person poster, the image showing a gaunt young man in a ball cap with tattoos wearing a black tank top. Terry said there is still a disconnect between that image and the son he saw in a photo taken a year before.
The wait ended on June 4, when Saskatoon police called Terry and said they’d found his son’s remains in a shallow grave. Chad’s death is being considered a homicide.
Days later, Terry and his brother stood together next to a shallow grave in a thick stand of trees and brush in George Genereaux Urban Regional Park on the western fringe of Saskatoon. The park, off Range Road 3063, is bracketed by fields, train tracks and Highway 7.
“I needed to see, from my own eyes. I needed some kind of closure,” Terry said in an interview.
He spoke to his son.
“I told my boy I loved him, that he was at peace now. He wasn’t in pain anymore.”
Terry Romanski says there was more to his son Chad than his addictions and sudden death. Police found the remains of the 31-year-old west of the city on June 4.
‘He enjoyed his family’
Chad was born and raised in Saskatoon, the youngest of two, with an older sister. Terry described his son as “a handful.”
“He played hockey. He liked to get into mischief. He was a cocky little kid, right? He played video games a little while back in his younger days.”
Chad enjoyed hunting and fishing with his maternal grandfather. He went to school in Saskatoon and had dreams of going into business.
Most of all, Terry remembers, “laughing and joking with me. He enjoyed his family.”
Terry is not entirely sure when addictions began taking over his son’s life.
“I don’t even know how to answer that.”
By his 20s, Chad was bouncing between years of sobriety and abuse. Eight years ago he had a daughter and it broke his heart that the addictions separated him from her, Terry said.
“He loved her to the moon and back,” Terry said. “It just ate my son alive.”
At one point, Chad bought a truck with a mobile power wash, planning to start a business.
“That was his dream. He was so proud of that. But his addictions took him on another path.”
Terry said he spoke frequently and frankly with Chad about his struggles. Terry wanted Chad to get away from his Saskatoon lifestyle, come to Alberta and work with him. His son, he said, did not lack self-awareness.
“‘Dad, I wake up in the morning, it’s not what I want. I miss my sober life. Sometimes it’s just too much to come back from,'” Terry remembers him saying.
“Me and him talked multiple times over the past month about getting the proper help.”
Terry met with CBC hours after taking his son’s body for cremation.
“We put a bunch of stuff in there with him,” he said. “A drawing his daughter did when she was younger of a chicken — I put that in there. When they had the ultrasound done of her. A picture of him and her on the train bridge. A picture of me and him. One of my dad.”
Terry returned home to Alberta with Chad’s remains on Wednesday.
“I guess he ended up coming with me anyway,” he said.
“It had to be this way, but he’s going to be out there.”
