Isearch Why

Why I'd like to write a memoir:

Why is such a daunting question. I ask why of other people, of events outside myself, a thousand times a day, but when posed to myself and my motivations, it's not so easy. There is so much swirling around in this head and heart that I want to put down on paper, see the important parts of my life in a book. An album containing the vocabulary of life. I'm not sure I can entirely or sufficiently explain an instinctual, nameless desire.

I believe it might all go back to when I was a little girl. My father had a friend, Arsalan, a man from Iran, who became an uncle of sorts. I used to sit atop several books in his swivel chair at the desk and type out little stories, usually centering around his German Shepherd, sunsets and canoes. He loved them, adored them, cared for them more than my mother and father did. They only found it cute, watching their daughter carefully and scrupulously teach herself to type. Watched as she unknowingly began a path they were sure she'd simply grow out of. I did it for him, for Arsalan, because he thought my stories were big and precious. I wrote for him.

He died from Leukemia, when I was nine, and I was angry with him. He left no story behind, only memories that with time have gotten watery like a cataract eye. For the fifteen years since then, much of my writing has revolved around him, attempts to make the images clear and ripe again.

In an odd way perhaps, I feel it'd be an injustice of sorts to one day leave this world never having told the story of who he was to me. Of who he simply was. Some people prefer to let rest what is lost, but not me. I want to dig it up, bring it to the light, examine life and all its experiences like a bug on parchment, write my own history books of the country within myself. As the person with the fingers that have always itched to write, write, write, I can find no other way to find meaning.

Although the urge to write a memoir has wrestled under my skin for some time, how to cipher it is the great question:

How does a memoir writer sift through the vast amount of material to find a cohesive beginning, middle and end?
1.How is life compartmentalized enough, neatened up enough, to be presented in a format understandable to the reader?
2.Is chronological order necessary?

When do the lines of memory and fact become too blurry?
1.How much does the writer rely on emotional memory to tell the story?
2.Does the reader really care for the stark truth, as long as the content remains intact?

Memoirs have come in the form of letters, journal entries, smaller essays under one large topic, and novel form. Which would be the best format for my writing?
1.What voice does the writer assume? Is it better to write from the eyes of now or from the eyes of then?