Grandma’s Best Friend’s Potato Salad

Frances Toren was one of my grandmother’s best friends. Frances was one of the nicest people… genuine, kind, warm, trustworthy… managing to be incredibly sweet without being saccharine. Neither my grandmother nor I put much credence in the supernatural, but I was present for a very odd experience regarding Frances. At the time, Frances was quite elderly and frail, but still very much in the world. She had been ill and my grandmother had been in regular contact by phone. I was home from school and in my grandmother’s kitchen late one afternoon when suddenly grandma gasped and grabbed for a chair to sit down. Concerned, I asked what was wrong. My grandmother (who was sharp as a tack until the day she died) looked at me with utter confusion written on her face.
She said, “I don’t really know. I just heard Frances’s voice in my ear, plain as I’m speaking to you.”
“Oh!” I paused, equally at a loss. “What did she say?”
“She said, ‘Don’t worry, Jeannette, everything will be alright. It’s going to be okay.’” My grandmother’s delicate eyebrows were pinched with worry. “I don’t know what it means.” My grandmother tried calling Frances, but got no answer. A couple of hours later, Frances’s husband called with the news that Frances had passed away.
Below you’ll find the scrap of paper my grandma had in her collection with Frances’s potato salad recipe jotted down.