If I can remain calm and quiet
With all the world crashing about me,
Secure in the knowledge God loves me
When everyone else seems to doubt me ...

If I can but keep on believing
What I know in my heart to be true,
That darkness will fade with the morning
And that "this will pass away, too!" ...

Then nothing in life can defeat me
For as long as this knowledge remains
I can suffer whatever is happening
For I know God will break all the chains
That are binding me tight in "the darkness"
And trying to fill me with fear ...
For there is "no night without dawning"
And I know that "my morning" is near.

KINGSTON, Jamaica - Cedella Booker, the mother of Jamaican music legend Bob Marley, has died, a family spokesman said Wednesday. She was 81. Booker died in her sleep Tuesday night at her home in Miami, apparently from natural causes, spokesman Jerome Hamilton said.

Booker, a Jamaica native, was 18 when she married Norval Marley, a British man 32 years her senior. Their son brought Jamaican reggae music to international prominence, becoming its international image. Bob Marley died in Miami of a brain tumor in 1981 at age 36.

"Mrs. Booker was the matriarch of a movement so powerful that the mystical qualities of the Marley musical legacy remain strong and potent," Jamaica Information Minister Olivia Grange said.

After Norval Marley died in 1955, Booker married an American man and settled in Delaware. She wrote two biographies of her famous son and recorded two albums, "Awake Zion!" and "Smilin' Island of Song."

"She was a star in her own right," Jamaica Prime Minister Bruce Golding said in a statement. "Her life was one of hardship, struggle and eventual fulfillment, and through it all, she exuded hope, strength and confidence."

Everyone in St. Ann's parish knew Booker as "Mama B," said Harry Shivnani, a family friend and general manager of Bob Marley's mausoleum.

"She loved cooking," Shivnani said. "Mama would make you the best pudding ever."

Robert Lalah, a columnist for the Jamaica Gleaner, interviewed Booker in February while she celebrated her son's birthday.

"She was a typical Jamaican grandmother," he said. "She was very warm, very friendly."

Booker is survived by two children and several grandchildren, including Ziggy Marley, who won four Grammys with the Melody Makers, a band that included brother Stephen and sisters Sharon and Cedella.

Funeral arrangements have not been announced.