The Absence of Applause
When I started this blog a few years ago, I promised I would occasionally update you on my writing career. Last week was a big week for me. I attended the Florida Christian Writers Conference in Leesburg, Florida. It was an excellent conference where I met literary agents, editors, publishers, and authors I admire, like Eva Marie Everson, Dr. Angela Hunt, and Dan Walsh.
What I didn't see coming was what happened at the awards banquet on the last night of the conference. I won these four awards: First Place in the Articles category for "Balancing the Checkbook of Your Life," Second Place for "The Absence of Applause," and Third Place for my new novella, The Christmas Photograph.
At the end of the night, they also announced the 2025 WRITER OF THE YEAR award. I was stunned when the Conference Director, Eva Marie Everson, read my name. I'm humbled and so grateful.
So, I thought for this blog, I would share with you my second place article, "The Absence of Applause." It's a story of what is lost forever when, as a child, you lose a parent. A LINK for the first place article is at the end of this blog.
The Absence of Applause
It was the worst day of my life.
June 6, 1965.
The day I lost my mom.
She was forty-five.
I was eleven.
Cancer didn’t care.
“In time you’ll heal,” well-wishers told me. But something in me had been severed—like a limb. Perhaps that’s why I still write about it—sixty years later. Crafting sentences about who she was. How it felt. What it taught me.
There is something lost forever when, as a child, you lose a parent. Author Anna Quindlen agrees. She lost her mother to ovarian cancer when she was nineteen. In her article, “On Losing Your Mom,” she said, “There’s just a hole in my heart, and nothing to plug it. The truth is that there is no one ever in your life like your mother. And that’s true even if she’s a bad mother ... she is the mirror, the point from which you always begin. It is who you are ...”
My father raised six kids—alone. We ranged in age from four to fourteen. I think he knew long before she was sick that if the unthinkable happened, he could never love again—nor give himself permission to love again. Unknowingly, he ascribed to a quote by F. Scott Fitzgerald: “There are all kinds of love in this world, but never the same love twice.”
I’ve often thought about the difference in our mutual loss—the pain, and its duration for a husband versus a child. My memories of her are few. But I recall an easy smile, a hearty laugh, and a warm heart, once insisting my father buy my older brother a new Schwinn bike for his birthday when they couldn’t afford it. I remember her instilling self-confidence in me just by her touch. When she died, she didn’t leave a hole; she left a crater.
Yet, I think my father’s loss was greater than mine—deeper, sharper, more intense. When you lose your soulmate, you lose a piece of yourself. Quindlen offered a different perspective in comparing these losses. “Certainly, it is true that my father was nearly as lost without his wife as we were without our mother,” she said. “The difference is that for the widower, there is an antidote called marriage. The motherless are motherless for life.”
She makes a good point. I remember in music class in junior high school singing a song titled “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child.” I refused to sing it. Instead, I let my thoughts drift out the window, waiting for the song to dissolve into silence. If that was the theme song of my life—why sing about it?
There are many things lost forever when a child loses a parent—but there are also a few things God can do to reshape us. Here are my two deepest personal losses, and three positive outcomes.
The Deepest Losses
The deepest loss was the power of her presence. Gone forever were the person, personality, and perspective of someone who loved me like only a mother does. I felt a vacuum. Still do.
Shortly after her death, my sisters hid a tube of her leftover lipstick. When they missed her most, they retrieved it from their secret hiding place, twisted open the tube, closed their eyes, and smelled the lipstick. The scent brought her back to them—reviving memories of her kissing them goodnight. It was their way of preserving her presence.
My second profound loss is what I call “the absence of applause.”
We, who have lost our moms as kids, live our lives listening to the absence of applause. We hear the silence after every achievement. From the hollow places of my heart I’ve often asked, “Are you proud of me, Mom?”
When I won a major gymnastics championship in high school, I heard the applause of the crowd when I landed my dismount from the high bar—but I was listening only for two hands clapping. Two hands that were not there—again.
As I grew up, the absence of applause continued. “I’ve graduated from college, Mom. I thought of you when I walked across the stage. Are you proud of me? I landed a job, and found a girl. Did you enjoy the wedding ceremony? We bought a house and had a son. Wish you could have seen all of this—or any of it. Are you proud of me, Mom?”
We who have lost our moms as children spend our lives chasing our goals—like everyone else—but only we hear the absence of applause. Only we notice the empty seat. We understand why. Our cheerleader died.
Positive Outcomes
I’ve learned you can find reasons to be grateful in any situation. Here are three things I’m grateful for.
First, grief led me to God. When I was searching for answers to “why” she died, I found “who” I could trust to get me through it. I learned God had a plan for my life—and I met Him personally in the Bible. Over time, I shared this with my siblings. All five later invited Christ into their lives.
Second, my loss helped me develop an eternal perspective. Life is short. James 4:14 says, “Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away.” My mother’s life was a vapor. But both her life—and death—inspire me to make my life count every day.
Third, I’ve learned to cultivate compassion for others. Weep with those who weep and rejoice with those who rejoice. The best way to get people through loss is to love them through it—by being there—and feeling their pain.
Today, I see God’s sovereignty in all events of my life—even Mom’s death.
And while I’ll never get an answer to my “why” questions, I know despite growing up with the absence of applause; I’ve learned how to find fortune—in my misfortune.
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Here is the link for the first place article, which you may have read before, titled "Balancing the Checkbook of Your Life." In 2022, this article was also a finalist for "Writer of the Year" in another national contest.
Please feel free to ask me a question, leave a comment, or join my mailing list by subscribing to my FREE newsletter, PAUSE MORE. RUSH LESS. at jamescmagruder.com. We'll talk about how to live a more meaningful life by slowing the pace you live it.
