I thought about that, Michael.
What I want to say in those first three lines of that verse is --
Singing songs though all the good and bad times of our lives has created a bond between us. All the things we've been through together and kept singing. Breakups, surgeries, marriages, kids growing, losing, finding jobs, getting sick, falling out with each other, mending fences, coming to appreciate what we each are like.

Emphasis on the bond, not the trials.

One other change, at least at the moment, is that I found when I sang it last night "Tonight" worked better than "We know" in the last verse.

At this point, for the last verse, I am singing:

Yet sometimes in the silence
From one verse to the next,
We can almost hear soft laughter there once more
And the echo of his voice is ringing
In the final chord --
Tonight he's singing on the other shore.

The other thing that keeps floating in my mind is -- Do I want to do another verse that says something about the place where the music goes, and the place where we go is the same place. Probably follow after the verse that ends with "Where their echoes ring forever more"

I keep hearing bits of the Si Kahn song, "Here is My Home" (but maybe I shouldn't admit where I'm stealing from). Something along these lines:
"If we can join ourselves in song,...
Our hearts will live when we are gone;

The spirit that finds music here...
Will sing forever in the air."