you can do something like
declare @x table
(
x xml
)
insert @x
values
('<Absence>
<date_from>2013-08-19T00:00:00+01:00</date_from>
<date_to>2013-08-19T00:00:00+01:00</date_to>
<absence_type>AAWS</absence_type>
<represents>S</represents></Absence>')
SELECT t.u.value('(./date_from)[1]','datetime') as date_from,
t.u.value('(./date_to)[1]','datetime') as date_to,
t.u.value('(./absence_type)[1]','varchar(15)') as absence_type,
t.u.value('(./represents)[1]','varchar(5)') as represents
FROM @x t1
CROSS APPLY x.nodes('Absence')t(u)
output
----------------------------------
date_from date_to absence_type represents
2013-08-18 23:00:00.000 2013-08-18 23:00:00.000 AAWS S
NB:- I've updated your XML value to make it well formed (it was missing closing tag for Absence)
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