On yet another occasion, Rabbi Soloveitchik noted that his grandfather, the great Talmudic scholar Rabbi Chaim Soloveitchik of Brisk, whose method of Talmudic analysis is widely emulated today, was once asked what should be written for his epitaph. He answered that the only thing he wanted to be mentioned was that he performed acts of chesed - of kindness. This was consistent with what he once told a newspaper interviewer - that the main work of a rabbi is to do chesed. Rabbi Aharon Soloveichik, R.Yosef Dov's brother, was asked several years ago if this is in fact what appears on R.Chaim's tombstone, because reports from visitors to his grave in Warsaw, where he died in 1918, seemed to be otherwise. R. Aharon said that he didn't know, because he had never visited the grave during his years in Warsaw. "Why do I need to visit his grave?" he asked "To say that he is dead? For me, he is alive!"
Although Rav Aharon continued and said that he studies the words of his grandfather every day and thus he remains alive for him, I believe he also meant that Rav Chaim's example as an "Ish Hachesed," a man who performs chesed, is always in front of him, as well. I believe that this is also the significance of the fact that although our parsha describes the death and burial of Sarah, it is called Chayei Sarah, the life of Sarah. Sarah's role as Avraham's partner in chesed is her everlasting legacy, and it is in reality the overriding theme of the parsha. The compendium Yalkut Reuveni cites a tradition that Avraham wished to bury Sarah in the Cave of Machpelah because when he was preparing the meal for his three guests, one of the cattle escaped and ran into that cave. Avraham ran after it, entered the cave, and saw Adam and Eve there, with a light burning. The scene impressed him so much that he wanted to be buried there as well, and so when Sarah died he sought out that location as her burial place. Thus, it was Avraham's chesed towards his guests, running after his cattle in order to serve it to them, that led him to the burial plot he would ultimately use for Sarah. That process of chesed, in which Sarah participated by preparing the food, thus generated a further chesed, the ultimate chesed that one does for the dead. Here, too, Avraham went to great lengths to perform this final act of chesed towards his wife.
Rabbi Y.D. Soloveitchik pointed out that although Avraham lived for forty-eight years after the death of Sarah, the Torah records little of what he did during this time. We are told that he married Keturah and had children with her, but he sent those children to the east, and they were thus excluded from Jewish destiny. Avraham and Sarah. explains Rabbi Soloveitchik, were a team, working together, each in their own way, to inculcate the trait of chesed in the nation that would ultimately emerge room them. As others have explained, Sarah's role in the partnership was to act as a check on unrestrained chesed, which can be destructive. This was the motive behind sending Yishmael away from the household. When Sarah passed from the scene, all that was left for Avraham to do was to pass their joint legacy on to the next generation. This was done by finding a wife for Yitzchak through Avraham's servant Eliezer. The salient feature that Eliezer looked for in a wife for Yitzchak was that of chesed, which he found in Rivkah. The joint legacy of chesed developed by Avraham and Sarah thus lived on through the marriage of Yitzchak and Rivkah. Our parsha is therefore rightly called Chayei Sarah, the life of Sarah, because her burial as a Jew indicates that her identity and her example as a paragon of chesed, performed together with Avraham, lives on.